Unbroken threads

Simon reached over and pulled open a long drawer under the display cabinet, and a collective sigh of yearning delight passed through the room. We were on the normally closed top floor of the Amano museum, gazing on the handiwork of weavers, tapesters and lace-makers who have been dead these past 900 years and more. Our group of textile fanatics could not but delight in the beauty and delicacy of their creations. And at the same time, disciples admiring the works of true masters, I'm sure each of us yearned ourselves to have the skill, eye and dedication that those works must have demanded.

The colours – often preserved for centuries in dry burial sites in the arid coastal region – were still bright: the reds and pinks of cochineal, the yellows and blues of Amazonian feathers, the remarkable range of undyed cotton shades from white to green to dark brown. In a couple of cases the craftswomen were literally showing off, with samplers of 60 or 70 designs demonstrating different colour combinations, patterns and techniques. Some of the pieces must have required literally hundreds of hours of painstaking work; some weaves were so fine you wondered how long the weaver had kept her eyesight. The museum curator, Doris, was living proof that those skills survive today, showing us how she had restored an ancient Chancay lace worked with a pattern of fish.

While our expert guides pointed out the differences between Huari, Chancay and Inca textiles, the recurring motifs of bird-feline-snake echoing the trinity of spirit world, earthly existence and underworld, and the particularities of various techniques, we passed among these bright beauties, marvelling and moved.