Mantle pin (ttipqui)

This pin, used to secure a woman’s shoulder cloth or mantle, features a tapering shaft surmounted by a large repoussé and chased plaque in the shape of a flower. Attached to the upper part of the shaft is a smaller plaque that serves as a base for the flower-shaped plaque. The smaller plaque features relief decoration in the form of a shield and two scrolls. Inside the shield is a design of three horizontal bars and two dots; while this design is suggestive of a coat of arms, it may simply be decorative. The hole punched in the lower part of the right-hand scroll, now damaged, may have originally been intended as an attachment point for a chain.

The large plaque (or head of the pin) takes the form of a three-petal flower with a green, faceted paste (leaded glass) gem in the center. The gem is held in place by a setting of twelve wide prongs, and is encircled by two relief borders. The floral and foliate decoration of the plaque is vertically symmetrical. At the bottom of the central field is a four-petal flower from which two leafy fronds emerge, framing the gem. The fronds meet at another four-petal flower near the top of the central field. Three teardrop-shaped settings embellish the plaque’s pointed petals. The stones or gems (probably, like the central gem, paste) that originally occupied these settings are now lost. The outer edge of the plaque is articulated by alternating major and minor borders. A chain is attached to the bottom of the plaque by two s-hooks looped through punched holes.

Archaeological and other evidence confirm that Andean women have used stickpins to secure and decorate their clothing since at least the early first millennium AD. Women inserted large pins, called tupus in Quechua (one of the indigenous languages of the Andes), into their untailored, wrap-around dresses (acsus) at the chest, just below the shoulders, with the pointed ends facing up, to hold the garment in place. Tupus were worn in pairs, and each pin was connected to its counterpart with a chain or cord. Women used a single smaller pin, called a ttipqui, to secure their mantles (llicllas), which were worn draped across the back and around the shoulders, the ends meeting and overlapping across the chest; the ttipqui was inserted diagonally into the cloth to hold the lliclla in place. Guaman Poma de Ayala, a native Peruvian born shortly after the Spanish invasion of the Inca Empire, included illustrations of Inca women wearing both types of pins in his manuscript, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, completed in 1615 and now in the Danish Royal Library (GKS 2232 quarto).

It can be difficult to distinguish tupus from ttipquis. The former are often larger than the latter, though they can also be comparable in size. While pairs of tupus were regularly attached to each other with chains or cords, many surviving examples have lost these elements. Further confusing the matter, decorative chains were sometimes attached to viceregal (1542–1824) and Republican (post-1824) ttipquis, as seen here. Subtle clues, however, can help to distinguish the two types of pins. The presence of a small hole where the shaft meets the head of an Inca garment pin indicates that it was intended to be used as a tupu: a chain would have been strung through the hole to connect it to its partner. Moreover, since tupus are worn with the pointed ends of the shafts facing up, the orientation of the figural and floral designs on post-contact pins can help, in turn, to orient us. Here, the flower-shaped plaque is right-side-up only when the pointed end of the shaft faces down, making it clear that the pin is a ttipqui.

The finest Precolumbian tupus and ttipquis were made of locally extracted and smelted gold and silver, though other metals, including copper and bronze, were also used. The heads of Inca pins were often hammered into flat circular or oval discs, as in two gilt silver pins in the Metropolitan’s collection (64.228.702-703). Other geometric and figural shapes, such as birds and monkeys, were also common across the ancient Andes (see, in the Metropolitan’s collection, 64.228.613-626, 1987.394.601-602, 1974.271.39, and 1987.394.549).

After the Spanish invasion in the 1530s, Andean women continued to use pins to secure their garments, though clothing and pin styles changed, as did metalworking techniques. In many regions acsus were gradually replaced by European-style blouses and skirts. Llicllas, however, survived and are still worn by many Andean women today. While the function of garment pins has thus been consistent across the pre- and post-invasion periods, pins from the latter era are most often used as ttipquis. Garment pins also appear a variety of new shapes, including spoons (1982.420.13), shells, flowers, suns, and large birds such as peacocks, turkeys, and eagles (1982.420.10). Some nineteenth-century pins, known as picchis, are associated with Aymara communities in the Lake Titicaca region; they have very short shafts, heads often executed in the round, and pendants in the shape of fish with articulated bodies (see, for example, the collection of pins at the Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru).

Post-invasion pins are predominantly made of silver, using techniques, like repoussé and engraving, which were rarely employed for ancient Andean pins (though repoussé was regularly used for other objects, such as the Chimú silver disks in the Metropolitan’s collection, 66.196.44 and 1978.412.144). In addition, they often feature European-style decorations and imagery, such as floral and vegetal designs, interlace, scrolls, mermaids, human figures, and faceted stones and paste gems. The latter, made from molded or cut leaded glass, were especially popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in both Europe and the Americas. Although less costly than precious gemstones, the finest paste gems were of a very high quality and were highly valued.

While the shape of the Metropolitan’s ttipqui is reminiscent of a tulip, it may, for an Andean viewer or wearer, have also have evoked native ñucchu flowers (members of the Salvia genus). These flowers are depicted in profile, with the pistil emerging from two open petals, on some ritual drinking cups known as keros as well as on viceregal textiles; see, for example, the flowers on a miniature tunic (2007.470) and a tapestry fragment (2011.324) in the Metropolitan’s collection. Red ñucchu flowers, including Salvia tubiflora Smith and Salvia dombeyi Epl, were sacred to the Inca, and both Salvia dombeyi Epl and another red ñucchu, Salvia oppositiflora Ruiz and Pávon, have been used in Holy Week and Corpus Christi processions in Peru and Bolivia since the viceregal period. Thus, this ttipqui may have been especially appealing to an Andean woman who sought to embrace the rich and complex visual traditions, spanning the Precolumbian, viceregal, and Republican periods, that were unique to her homeland.

Kate E. Holohan, 2016
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, Department of the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas

Further Reading
Esteras Martín, Cristina. Platería del Perú virreinal, 1535-1825. Madrid: Grupo BBV and Lima: Banco Continental, 1997.

Phipps, Elena, Joanna Hecht, and Cristina Esteras Martín. The Colonial Andes: Tapestries and Silverwork, 1530-–1830. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004.

Vetter Parodi, Luisa María and Paloma Carcedo de Mufarech. El tupo: Símbolo ancestral de identidad femenina. Lima: Gráfica Biblos S.A., 2009.