Connecting Threads: The Carter Collection of Pre-Columbian Peruvian Textiles
October 28, 2006 through January 7, 2007

In 1944, Florida State College for Women acquired 642 artifacts of ancient Peruvian origin. This donation was an important catalyst in the creation of a Department of Anthropology in the school that was transforming into the Florida State University. The Department of Textiles and Consumers Sciences have kindly shared a portion of this Pre-Columbian collection, a selection of the Peruvian textiles, for display at the Appleton Museum to complement the concurrent Modern Tapestries exhibition.

Mary Bruce Patterson Carter (an alumna of the Florida State College for Women) and her husband John lived in Panama, where he operated an import/export business. While living in various Latin American countries, they amassed a large personal collection of wood, stone, bone, pottery and textile artifacts. After their return to the United States the collection was donated to Mary Carter’s alma mater.

The one hundred and forty seven textiles in the collection cover a vast array of time and cultures, some dating as early as 500 B.C. The highly developed textile arts of ancient Peru display some of the most complex and intricate techniques known. Textiles in the Carter collection show examples of gauze, feather work, looping, and tapestry. Little is known of the creators of these textiles; they left behind no written records, and their cultures were irrevocably altered after the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. Yet the work of their hands continues to speak to us across the centuries.