aksu (Over Skirt)

Aksu (over-skirt). Also referred to as a carrying cloth.

Design includes horses. Horses were adopted as a symbol of power when the Spanish imported them into Bolivia.

Supplementary warp technique with hand spun alpaca wool and commercial cotton.

A rectangular black cloth with a wide, colourful, patterned band lengthwise across the lower half. The side and bottom edges of the cloth are bordered in red, with green and pink dots along the edge. The band has three horizontal rows, each patterned with horse motifs in profile. The top and bottom row have a dark red background, and the middle row has a background of horizontal red, black, and green stripes. There are colourful patterned borders between the rows. All three rows begin (left-right) with two horses, the bottom four facing down and the top two facing up. All the rows have a space in the pattern where the background colour is visible without pattern. After the space, the horses in the top and bottom rows are alternately facing up and down the cloth in pairs, repeated across the textile. The middle row has a horizontal zigzag line with spirals on either side, bordered by another line. In the empty triangles made by the zigzag pattern, is a single horse motif facing away from the middle of the row. There are also alpaca(?) and dog(?) motifs in some triangular spaces along with the horse.