There’s mystery to the origin stories of some of the ancient textiles in the Nasher Museum of Art’s collection. A team of Duke chemists is on the case. Chemistry Ph.D. student Anna Sheinberg is working with fellow researchers to extract new information from aged, dyed textiles in the museum collection.
They’re doing so using an advanced imaging technique called pump-probe microscopy, which uses ultra-fast laser pulses to get a deep look at the pigments. Information gleaned can help researchers better understand the textiles’ heritage and can inform conservation as well.
Importantly, the technique does not harm the fibers.
Working with Julia McHugh, curator at the Nasher Museum of Art, Sheinberg studied the museum’s collection of ancient textiles from present-day Peru. They were specifically focused on the cochineal-dyed textiles. Cochineals are small insects that live on prickly pear cacti native to Mexico and South America and have been harvested and used by Indigenous communities for thousands of years to produce vibrant red dyes.
Being able to determine whether the textiles were in fact dyed with red pigment from cochineals could help the researchers understand who created the textiles originally.
“The Nasher has a great collection of ancient textiles from the area we now call Peru that could be of use to [Sheinberg’s] research,” said McHugh, who is also an adjunct assistant professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies. “These were pieces that we didn’t know a lot about ourselves.”
McHugh hopes the museum can learn more about the textiles and confirm that they are cochineal-dyed, helping to narrow down how and when they were first made.
