by guest blogger and PC customer, Carol Myers
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Colorful embroidered accessories at market Perusing the pages of the Peruvian Connection catalog over the years has engendered a lot of daydreaming on my part. For example, I’ve always been curious to meet the people who create the gorgeous knitted items featured in the catalog. Like me, do you wonder about the sources and symbolism that underlie the traditional design motifs? Do you desire first-hand experience of the animals that produce the fibers, of the colors of the landscape, or to breathe the thin air of the High Andean mountain passes? And what if could try your hand at some of the traditional fiber crafts under the expert and patient guidance of native Andean artisans?
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Handspinner in Chinchero Amazingly, it’s possible to do all of the above, as I did during September and October 2011, traveling with Puchka Textile Tours. These 3-week small group tours include even more than I had previously day-dreamed about, a mix of opportunities specifically tailored to those who appreciate the breadth and depth of the world of textiles, and who wish to learn more about the cultural context, both historic and contemporary, of the fiber arts of Peru. The tours include museums, markets, three very different cities, a choice of two 4-day workshops in knitting, weaving, hand or machine embroidery techniques, among others. A visit to the fabulous and remote El Refugio Resort in the Colca Canyon and to the requisite Machu Picchu, as well as an afternoon spent in the alpaca production facilities of Grupo Michell are also part of the mix. A major highlight of the tour is a leisurely visit with Maximo Laura, world-recognized tapestry weaver and teacher, at his home and studio in Lima; Maximo and his assistants also conduct the weaving workshop in Arequipa for tour participants. There is plenty of time on the tour to socialize, eat, drink, explore, photograph, and of course SHOP!
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Brightly colored yarns for weaving I’m from a family of three sisters (aka “The Fiber Girls”) as well as a mother, aunts, and grandmothers who were avid, expert, and stylish sewers and knitters. Given that background, the trip was perfect in terms of like-minded traveling companions, people with all kinds of textile and fiber-related experience. As a side benefit, husbands or friends who might not be so fiber-focused are welcomed and accommodated with activities that suit their particular interests.
If you’d like to bring to life your Peruvian Connection daydreams, the Puchka tours are the perfect way to do it!
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Hiram Bingham in Peru during the 1911 Expedition The world was abuzz with the excitement of discovery in the early 20th century: adventurers were racing to the North and South poles, excavators were scouring Egypt for King Tut’s tomb, and explorers were uncovering ancient ruins all across Peru. Rumors of a “lost” Inca city swirled as more and more explorers set their sights on this South American gem, with its rich cultural heritage, its ancient legacies and its diverse terrain. Driven by the prospect of discovering this lost city, Hiram Bingham, a South American History Professor at Yale, organized a seven-man team for an adventure of a lifetime. His exploration team, known as The Yale Peruvian Expedition, left American shores on June 8, 1911, full of excitement and anticipation for what they would discover in Peru.
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Following the advice of several locals around Cusco, Bingham’s team headed deep into the mountainous region of Urubamba, along the very trail Manco Inca is believed to have taken 350 years before as he fled from the Spanish invaders. Clearing swift river rapids, crossing through dense jungle terrain and climbing treacherous slopes, Bingham became a “real-life Indian Jones” as he searched for this ancient “lost city.” When the Expedition reached the sandy plain of Mandor Pampa on the evening of July 23 rd, Bingham asked a local merchant, Melchor Arteaga, if he knew where to find any ruins. As Christopher Heaney details in Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, A Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu, Arteaga, “pointed straight up to the top of the mountains, to a ridge that connected a high, thin peak to a much larger, more solid mountain.” Apparently drunk and slurring, he explained to Bingham that the peak was Huayna Picchu, and the ruins were on the ridge. The larger mountain’s name was Machu Picchu, meaning “Old Peak.”
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A view of the trail to Machu Picchu (which of course did not exist when Bingham climbed it) The following morning, July 24th, Bingham embarked on a hike that would lead him to his destiny. Climbing towards the ridge with one other crew member and the local merchant Arteaga, who was hired as a guide, Bingham recalled that for “a good part of the distance we went on all fours, sometimes holding on by our fingernails.” After an hour and a half, they reached a clearing where a single hut stood. It belonged to a family of Indian farmers, the Richartes, who found refuge from their oppressive landlord on this rich soil four years before. Along with two other families, they successfully harvested potatoes, maize, peppers, sugar cane, tomatoes and berries high up in the peaks of the Andes. As it turns out, the surprised family was acquainted with Arteaga and agreed to show Bingham the way to the ruins.
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A view of the ruins at Machu Picchu Richarte’s barefoot son, who was no older than eight, guided them through thick thorn-ridden vines and branches. Nearing one of the peaks, Bingham suddenly saw his treasure: “a jungle-covered maze of small and large walls, the ruins of buildings made of blocks of white granite, most carefully cut and beautifully fitted together without cement. Surprise followed surprise until there came the realization that we were in the midst of as wonderful ruins as any ever found in Peru.” And so Bingham “discovered” the now-famous ruins of Machu Picchu.
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Machu Picchu today Without surprise, Bingham’s designation as the “discoverer” of these ruins is wrought with difficulties and controversies. Not only were indigenous people living in the ruins, but, once made public, many people came forward claiming to have visited the ruins earlier. Defending his “discovery”, Bingham later wrote, “I suppose that in the same sense of the word as it is used in the expression ‘Columbus discovered America’ it is fair to say that I discovered Machu Picchu.” Nonetheless, he did shine the public spotlight on the ruins of Machu Picchu, which are now a major source of tourism in Peru. As Heaney explains, “no one had yet described Machu Picchu, photographed the ruins, or tried to understand them as a historical site.”
Machu Picchu by Bingham
One of the original photos of Machu Picchu taken by Hiram Bingham Upon Bingham’s rediscovery, The Yale Peruvian Expedition immediately set to work uncovering and documenting the ruins. With the help of the indigenous families, they cleared the overgrown vegetation to fully reveal the stunning stone buildings, captured forever in Bingham’s breath-taking photographs of the ruins. When he returned to Connecticut, these photos helped him garner support from both Yale and the National Geographic Society for his return excavation trip the following year, 1912.
On his return trip, he first had to secure the Peruvian government’s approval, which had strict laws against the exportation of any Peruvian artifact. Although highly contested and debated, Bingham finally won the assent of the law, but only under two conditions: 1) that his crew finish by the first of December that year (shortening excavation from 10-20 years to less than a year); and 2) that Peru had the right to request the return of all excavated materials. In other words, Peru had agreed to loan these artifacts to Yale for the sake of research.
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Hiram Bingham and a local man at Machu Picchu during the excavation On July 24, 1912, one year to the day that he rediscovered the ruins, Bingham’s crew opened the first of several machays, or burial sites. In this first grave, they found only some broken pots and a few human remains, “sitting upright with the knees pulled up to the chest in the manner of most Andean burials” (137). Again with the help of the local Peruvian farmers, Bingham’s crew managed to excavate 107 graves, ultimately yielding 173 human remains and thousands of potsherds, stone carvings and bronze and silver artifacts. This massive collection was sent back to Yale in 93 of the expedition’s food boxes, which, as Heaney explains, represented the “only intact collection of human and artistic remains from an Inca royal estate that escaped the torches of the Spanish conquest” (150).
With this tremendous collection, Bingham set to work theorizing the historical significance of this ancient civilization: Who were these people? How did they fit in the timeline of Inca history? Why were they located in such a remote location? As Bingham asked his readers in the February issue of National Geographic, “Is it possible that at Machu Picchu we have the ruins of Tampu-tocco (the legendary birthplace of the Incas) and also the ruins of Vilcabamba the Old, the sacred city of one of the last Incas and the home of his women and priests?” To his death, Bingham believed Machu Picchu was both the cradle and the grave of Inca civilization.
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Ruins at Espiritu Pampa But, time has proven both theories to be wrong. Tampu Tocco, that legendary cave from which the first Inca was “born,” is now understood to be south of Cuzco in Pacariqtambo. Vilcabamba, the last city established by Manco Inca as he fled from the Spanish, is now associated with Espiritu Pampa. Machu Picchu is now believed to be a royal estate that was built for Pachacutec, an early Inca emperor who greatly expanded the empire from the Cuzco valley to nearly the entire civilized South America. Heaney explains that Machu Picchu is hailed as “the best of all Inca sites,” representing the realization of their architectural and religious ideals: “to worship the sun by building toward it, aligning altars along its path; to honor mountains by building out of them, quarrying stone from the site itself; to glorify water with acequias, canals of waters that fed burbling baths” (214). Bingham’s vast excavation has yielded a wealth of knowledge about the Inca people, from their daily habits to their overarching beliefs about life and death.
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An Inca relic bottle, one of the thousands of pieces excavated from Machu Picchu that are to return to Peru this year. Image courtesy of Yale Peabody Museum The year 2011 marks the hundredth anniversary of Hiram Bingham’s epic scientific discovery of Machu Picchu. This year also marks the rightful return of all the objects excavated in 1912 by the Yale Peruvian Scientific Expedition. In celebration of these landmarks, a new museum and research center is being jointly inaugurated by Cuzco University and Yale University in the Casa Concha, the former palace of the emperor Topa Inca. The museum in the center of Cuzco will house the artifacts excavated in 1912. The adjacent research center will conserve and investigate the collections, serving as the home of an academic collaboration between the two universities. This new museum and research center embodies one of Bingham’s last wishes concerning the excavated objects and the ongoing partnership between Peruvian and American researchers. In support of this monumental collaboration, Peruvian Connection will donate all proceeds from the sale of our Expedition Vest to this new establishment. Designed after the original vest Hiram Bingham wore on the 1911 discovery expedition to Machu Picchu (which you can see at the top of this blog), our Expedition Vest packs a remarkable story in every stitch.
Our latest store is now open in San Francisco, the perfect climate for a warm and woolly alpaca sweater. The San Francisco Chronicle took notice with a very nice article: see Window Shopping in the November 20 style section.
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All our stores are getting ready for the holidays, with lots of beautiful merch arriving daily, and fabulous finds from Prize Antiques at our Kansas City and Washington DC locations.
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Kuba Cloth
The Kuba people of Africa have a vital textile tradition pulsing through their deeply rooted history, their rituals, their culture and their art. Known as People of the lightning, People of the king and People of the cloth, the Kuba people are actually eighteen different, but culturally related, ethnic groups living in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo (although some say nineteen groups). Their designation as “people of the lightning” derives from their exulted skill in throwing many-bladed ritualistic knives (shongo) that resemble lightning. In the language of their neighboring tribe, the Luba, Kuba literally means “lightning.” The Kuba self-identify as “people of the king,” unified under one royal leader whose lineage has been preserved for over 400 years. Their identification as “people of the cloth,” or Bambala, encapsulates their rich legacy as virtuosos of the textile arts. On another level, it also refers to the Kuba’s astonishing bounty of status cloth and ceremonial costumes, marking this group as particularly wealthy and powerful. These cloths are commonly used as a means of measuring wealth and, in fact, some cloths are used as a form of currency (“woven currency”). Even the King’s palace is centered around cloth: it is always built within the “well-woven plains” and the name of the palace itself conjures the word mbal, used to refer to a panel of woven raffia cloth.
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In her book Weaving Abstraction: Kuba Textiles and the Woven Art of Central Africa, Vanessa Drake Moraga argues that “what may be most distinctive about the Kuba tradition is that textile art ultimately represents its most versatile, dynamic and imaginative form of visual expression” (12). Textiles, then, are a visual language used by the Kuba to communicate essential information about themselves as individuals and as a society. “Getting dressed” is not simply a matter of personal preference, it is a matter of concretely saying who you are, where you came from and where you are going. Their textiles are important markers of social status, lineage and ethnicity. Extremely subtle differences in color, pattern, texture, borders, embroidery, and even how the pieces are constructed and layered all play a tremendous role in identifying the different ethnic groups and the different individuals within these groups. It is truly astounding the degree to which Kuba people are identified through their clothing.
Kuba face mask
The foundation of the Kuba textile tradition is raffia, a type of palm fiber. Raffia is used to make almost everything—from woven fabric and mats to headwear, baskets, masks and even the walls of homes. Raffia gains its significance not only as a valuable physical resource (out of which things can be made), but also as an invaluable spiritual resource. It is believed to be the thread that connects life to death and the realm of the spirit to the realm of the ritual. Raffia clothing plays an especially important role during ceremonies and rites of passage, with specific textiles associated with various rituals. Since clothing is an exact marker of who someone is during their lifetime, the Kuba people believe it is crucial to arrive in the land of the dead dressed in their best attire. For the most prosperous, this would be the ornamental raffia skirts typically worn for ceremonies.
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With their distinctive artistry, cultural import and symbolic function, the spectacular Kuba textiles have long inspired our designers at Peruvian Connection. We hope to help preserve these ancient traditions by bringing them to life on our wearable works of art. Our Kuba Sheath Dress (shown at the left) is patterned after a ceremonial wrap-skirt, known as a Tcaka, made from woven raffia with patches and embroidery. This particular skirt is thought to belong to the Ngeende group, the largest and most dominant ethnicities of the Kuba people. Our Sunila Skirt and the Kuba Tank Top were also inspired by traditional Shibori-dyed Kuba cloths.
Peruvian Connection is proud to support The Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., which currently houses an impressive collection of Kuba textiles. This exhibit is the first major museum exhibition in the U.S. to spotlight such a wide-ranging survey of Kuba design. For more information about this exhibit and The Textile Museum, please visit their website here.
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Peruvian food is finally finding its place in the culinary spotlight. Top chefs from all over the world are gathering this week in Lima for the 4th annual Mistura Food Festival, the most important food event in all of Latin America.
Peruvian food is a delicious fusion resulting from Spanish, Japanese, African, and Chinese influences, blended with flavors from the native Quechua culture. Many of the cuisine’s key ingredients are as healthful as they are flavorful, featuring seafood, quinoa, and an abundance of fresh vegetables, fruits and herbs.
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Peruvian cuisine has become a popular choice across the country, with the number of Peruvian restaurants in big cities quadrupling over the last decade. Peru’s top celebrity chef, Gastón Acurio, opened his first restaurant in Lima in 1994. Chef Acurio is responsible for much of the rise in popularity, now with 32 Peruvian restaurants in 14 cities worldwide. We’re happy to find that his restaurant, La Mar Cebicheria, is just a few blocks from our soon-to-open store in San Francisco, at Pier 1.5 on the Embarcadero!
Read more in the Wall Street Journal article, including a recipe for Sea Bass Ceviche with Leche de Tigre. For more recipes, see our newsletters: Peruvian Markets (recipe for Choclo San Antonio), Potatoes: from the Andes to Ireland (recipe for Papas Rellenas), and our blogs with recipes for Pisco Sours, Quinoa Salad, and Suspiro de Limeña.
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