Painted Qero Cups from the Inka and Colonial Periods in Peru: An Analytical Study of Pigments and Media
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Painted Qero Cups from the Inka and Colonial Periods in Peru: An Analytical Study of Pigments and Media Richard Newman and Michele Derrick Scientific Research Lab, Museum of Fine Arts, 465 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115, USA ABSTRACT Qero cups, made from wood, ceramics and precious metals, have been used for millennia in the Andean region for ritual consumption of maize beer. From the cusp of the Inka-Colonial period, painted decoration became more common on qero cups. Most of the painted decoration actually consists of thin layers of a pigmented rubbery material that was cut and inlaid into shallow carved cavities in the wood substrate. For this project, 312 paint samples from 53 qero cups in collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and American Museum of Natural History were analyzed. The study of paints is part of larger study of the technology of over 150 qero cups from these four collections. Samples from seven qeros in Peruvian collections have also been analyzed. Nearly two dozen pigments have been identified, including mineral, synthetic inorganic compounds, and natural dyestuffs. The binder consisted of an unusual natural resin (commonly called ‘mopa mopa’) usually mixed with a nondrying or semidrying oil. This resin, which was used at least locally during the pre-Inka period and continued to be used through the Colonial period and later, came from a tree that grows in the montana of southwest Colombia, a region that was part of the northernmost extension of the Inka empire. INTRODUCTION Qeros are wooden drinking vessels that were utilized in the Andean region for ritual consumption of maize beer for centuries before the Spanish conquest; they continued to be used in the colonial period (beginning in 1532) and are still used today in traditional communities [13]. The chronology, iconography, and historic and ethnographic contexts of qeros have been the subject of much research, but to date little research on the materials and techniques that went into the making of qeros has been published. In 1994, conservators from four New York City institutions began a detailed examination of about 150 qeros housed in their collections (American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution). The goals of the project are to thoroughly characterize the materials and techniques, and to explore the value of this information to questions of production, chronology and the introduction of nonindigenous materials. The qero cups included in the project date from the Inka period through the colonial period. Most Inka period cups were usually decorated simply with linear, geometric motifs incised into the wood (figure 1). Occasionally, some also included painted decorative elements. During the colonial period, painted decoration became the norm; in some cases, complex painted scenes covered the entire outer surface of a cu
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