Plume

Ancient Andean elites often adorned themselves with elaborate headdresses of cloth or other materials that supported ornaments such as feathers or gold plumes. Such ornaments distinguished curacas (leaders) from other members of a community. This plume was shaped from hammered gold sheet to resemble a feather, a material perhaps even more esteemed than gold.

The decoration on this plume is minimal, consisting of simple bands of embossed dots and pairs of parallel lines radiating upward and enclosing the upward rows of dots. The two tiny holes on the upper real left were probably used for a repair with a thread to prevent the small tear in the gold from expanding. On the back of the plume, lines in the reddish patina represent the pattern of a textile, perhaps the headdress material upon which the ornament once rested.

References and Further Reading

Pillsbury, Joanne. “Imperial Radiance: Luxury Arts of the Incas and Their Predecessors.” In Golden Kingdoms: Luxury Arts in the Ancient Americas, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, Timothy Potts, and Kim N. Richter, pp. 33-35. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2017.