Plumarias (Featherworks)

Works:

“Feathers were used by many of the indigenous communities in the Americas. They were generally used as body ornaments, garments, capes, headdresses, or were glued to the body to generate body designs. Sometimes they were used to decorate the bodies of the dead, burial bundles or, sometimes, when only the bones remained, they were decorated with feathers and used in ceremonies. Feathers were also used to decorate objects, staffs, masks and statues. Feathers could be obtained hundreds or thousands of kilometres away from where the feathers were made, and were brought there by exchange between many communities. The effort made to obtain feathers speaks to the importance of feathers in these communities.

Archaeologists associate the use of feathers, as well as other representations of animals, with what is considered to be shamanic thinking, that is, the belief of some of the communities to transform themselves into animals by means of rituals, and thus, to be able to interact with the supernatural.

The feathers used in the past came from different places, for example from the Amazon, the plains or the Magdalena and Cauca valleys. On rare occasions, the feathers were dyed using special woods, which were boiled for days until the pigment penetrated the fibres. Most feathers did not require dyes and colour variations were achieved by using feathers from different birds or different parts of birds. In other cases, feather colours were achieved by plucking feathers from some species of birds held in captivity, placing chilli pepper on each feather and putting them back on the bird.

Today, feathers are still used in clothing, textiles and decorative objects. Industrial pigments and the presence of ducks and chickens almost everywhere replaced the need to obtain feathers from thousands of miles away. PLUMARIAS.”

~Saúl Torres