Today has seen the launch of The Strawberry Thief, a new iPad game developed by Sophia George, former Games Designer in Residence. Sophia took her inspiration from the William Morris textile design of the same name, which is on display in Gallery 125F. Having recently been willing the strawberry plants in my garden to come good with their final late crop of small but tasty fruit, this launch seems timely.
Morris apparently based the pattern and name on the thrushes which frequently stole the strawberries in the kitchen garden of his countryside home, Kelmscott Manor, in Oxfordshire.
For me, this design calls to mind a striking Peruvian tapestry made around 200 years earlier, which depicts birds with multi-coloured plumage swooping towards stems of plump strawberries – appearing to testify to their timeless attraction to our feathered friends.
Having done some digging into horticultural history (pun intended!), I discovered that these strawberries are probably Fragaria chiloensis (the beach strawberry, Chilean strawberry, or coastal strawberry), one of two species of strawberry that were hybridized to create the modern garden strawberry.
The strawberries are just one of many motifs that form the overall design of this rather arresting tapestry, woven in coloured wools, silks and silver-gilt threads. The whole design depicts a variety of creatures and flowers against a bright cochineal-red background, including: merpeople playing stringed instruments (suggestive of lutes); a crowned lion; parrots and other birds; a unicorn with its head lowered; dog-like animals; and two mythical creatures with the appearance of stylised lions.
Although woven in Peru, the design demonstrates a fusion of native techniques and colouring with motifs and imagery imported from Europe and Spain’s East Asian colonies. This suggests that the tapestry was made by local Peruvian craftsmen for Spanish colonisers.
Originally a wall-hanging or bed-curtain, this tapestry is one of three known examples of Andean tapestries that are made mainly of silk with Asian-derived motifs. All three are thought to have been made in the same workshop. This design is slightly different from the other two pieces, but it shares some motifs with them: the Chinese mythological xiezhai, a phoenix, and a European-style crowned lion.
Interestingly, the xiezhai and the unicorn appear to have no mythological parallels in the Andes. Also, the stringed instruments being played by the merpeople appear similar to lutes, which had an established history of use in Spain prior to this date.
The weaving is of very good quality and the colour palette is typically Andean, for example the deep cochineal red ground. Cochineal dye was abundant in both Peru and Mexico, and the red yarns would have been dyed there. The exception is the chocolate-brown lions in undyed wools which are the natural colour of the fibre. This wool was probably made using hair from one of two South American camelids – the vicuña or guanaco.
The silks used for the tapestry would have arrived in Mexico on the Manila galleons which plied their trade from the Philippines after the Spanish conquest in the 1560s. These silks would have come from Asia and were probably treated in Mexico before being sent south to Peru. In the Andes silk yarns were spun and plied before being woven into tapestries, whereas in China silk was used unspun.
The use of silver metal threads does not have an Andean origin. The metal yarns are made of solid cut sheet metal wound round a core silk thread and this method of making suggests they are European in origin, probably imported from Spain, but composed of silver mined in the Americas.
This tapestry will feature in our Spanish America display, which will consider the marked effect colonisation and commerce had on the art of indigenous craftsmen making products for both local and export markets.