Loom with Partially Finished Textile

Throughout the indigenous Americas and over the millennia weavers have employed the same basic backstrap loom, much like a thousand-year-old Andean example. This one is from Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Similar ones remain in use in Guatemala as well as in Perú and Bolivia.

This mostly woven example from around 1940 has sheep’s-wool warps (vertical threads tied to the bars and brought up to make the diamond pattern) and wefts (horizontal threads holding the warps in place). The Spanish introduced sheep when they colonized the Americas. Before the European animals, Mesoamerican weavers had no fur-bearing animals to shear and spin the fiber into thread; they worked in cotton and plant fiber exclusively. Sheep's wool similarly transformed the textile arts of the American Southwest, for example making what are considered “traditional” Navajo rugs possible. Wool takes dyes better than cotton; here the brown was dyed and the white is the natural color of the wool.