Tapestry Weaving
Hover Montes was born a poor country boy in San Pedro de Cajas in 1942. The Andean village's approximate population of 15,000 lived modestly planting and harvesting crops on the grand peaks of the fertile Andean soil. At the age of 2 Hover Montes's father passed, leaving
himself, his 4 brothers and sisters and his mother unprepared for the ceaseless hardships of rural peasant life. He began working of various plantations at a very early age when at the age of 9 Hover Montes discovered his artistic talents creating decorative wool tapestries with the same techniques used by the ancient Peruvians.
Tufts of wool are first hand picked from unkempt bundles purchased at San Pedro de Cajas's plaza then tediously combed using wire-bristled paddles to stretch and soften until smooth. Once combed the wool is placed in large clay vats for dying. Traditional vegetable dyes used by the Incas like queuleyshu (ke-oo-lay-shoo) are combined with other vegetable dyes and minerals for boiling the appropiate color. The condition and availability of some vegetable dyes at San Pedro de Cajas vary from one year to the other depending on the annual rainfall in the cordillera. For the color density needed, some wools are treated up to 3 times or boiled in vats for days in order to receive the appropiate tone. The mineral cochinilla (ko-chee-nee-ya) for example is used for the color red while the colors white, brown and black are the only colors not processed since there are no vegetable dyes for these colors; they are natural colors that come directly from the sheep as such. Once removed the refined wool is dried then hand spun into long finger-sized strands, the exact wool used by Hover Montes for all his tapestries.
Up to 3 different sized wooden looms are used by Hover Montes and his family, all hand made by carpenters in San Pedro de Cajas in order to make the varied sized tapestries. Some tapestries can measure as long as 12 feet across and may take as long as 5 weeks to complete.
By working row by row from the bottom to the top, pieces of colored wool are inserted within the vertical cotton threads stretched across the loom. The thickness of each row can measure from as little as an 1/8" to almost 1/2" wide depending on the image made by Hover Montes. Once a row is completed horizontal cotton threads are then threaded through the vertical threads in order to fastened the completed row before the next row is commenced. Darker pieces of colored wool are at times applied moist for the color to bleed into the white threads in order to maintain the tapestry's shadows in proportion with the created image. For the darkening and the lightening of colors during his work, white or black wool is mixed by hand with the given color in order to receive the correct tone for the work being done. Never are his tapestries painted on or marked during this process or once completed. All details up close show that an individual piece of colored wool was used in order to make the image, a talent mastered by both Hover Montes and his
youngest
son David.
