Latin American Textiles

© The Field Museum, A106893c

This man's hat and tunic, called a "chushma," are made of bark cloth. The design is stamped with wooden blocks and then painted. Archaeological fragments of bark cloth found in Peru date from 2,000 B.C. Tropical trees all over the world provide the raw material to be softened and beaten into tapa bark cloth, and the tools and techniques for its production are much the same wherever it is made. Beaters and anvils may be smooth or incised to leave patterns in the cloth.

It is 109 cm long.

For further reading, see: Patterns of Paradise: the styles and significance of bark cloth around the world, by John Terrell and Anne Leonard. Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 1980.

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