The feathered textiles of Peru are among the most luxurious
textile products of the ancient world. Each feather is
individually sewn to a cotton base-fabric, and the surfaces are
thus built up to a soft, downy skin of radiant color. The
feathers of tropical birds, from the Amazon jungles in eastern
Peru, made the most brilliantly colored textiles, and the
intense blues, greens, reds, and yellows were highly prized. The
showy feathers were used in the fabrication of luxury items of
all sorts, from objects as small as ear ornaments to those as
large as these hangings, which have an average size of two by
seven feet. The blue-and yellow-feathered textiles were made of
macaw feathers, and it is presumed that they were used to
decorate the walls of large compounds or courts on special
occasions. A group of feathered hangings, to which this one
belongs, were accidentally discovered in the early 1940s, when a
large cache of ninety-six of them was reported in a find near
the Ocoña River in southern Peru. The textiles