Tocapu, Inca Textile Symbols

On the finest Inca tunics the cloth is covered in small squares, each holding a geometric figure, and no two rows repeat. These are tocapu, also written tocapo, tokapu or t'oqapu. Whether they were a script, a heraldry or a record is still argued. What is not argued is that in the Andes pattern was never decoration. It said something. We try to keep that in mind before we cut.

What is a tocapu?

A tocapu is a square, a hand's width or less, filled with a figure: a stepped diamond, a zigzag, a checkerboard, a key, a set of dots. On a royal tunic there can be hundreds, set in rows or in a band at the waist, and the sequence is deliberate. Weaving one took a specialist. The finest cloth of the Inca, called qumpi, was woven by master weavers and by the aqllakuna, women chosen to live and weave for the state, and the richest of it was made for the ruler alone.

Where to see them

The most famous example is a tunic held at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., covered almost entirely in tocapu: more than three hundred, and almost none of them alike. Tocapu also appear on keros, the wooden drinking cups of the Inca and of the colonial period after them, and in the drawings of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, whose chronicle of around 1615 shows Inca rulers dressed in them. Museums in Peru, Chile, Europe and the United States hold others.

Was it writing?

Nobody knows for certain. In the twentieth century some researchers argued that tocapu were a system of signs with fixed meanings, a kind of writing in cloth that worked alongside the knotted-string khipu, and catalogued several hundred distinct designs in search of a key. Many scholars read them instead as emblems of lineage, province or office, closer to heraldry than to an alphabet. A handful of designs turn up again and again on different pieces, which suggests they carried a settled sense. What every reading agrees on is that the figures were not chosen for looks. They meant, and the people who could read them knew what they meant.

Tocapu and the chakana

Many tocapu are built on the same logic as the chakana, the Andean cross: a square divided into levels, a centre, four sides, steps. Once you know the chakana, you start to see it folded down inside the squares, at the size of a thumbnail.

Pattern in aguayo today

Tocapu belonged to the royal cloth, not the everyday. But the same idea runs through aguayo now: the stripe order names a community, the figured bands are a weaver's signature, and a pattern can tell someone from the next valley where you are from. That is the tradition our pattern takes its cue from. It was speaking long before we came to it.

Cut with respect

This is why we do not copy tocapu or any other royal design, and why we do not print an imitation onto plain fabric. Our pattern is inspired by everyday aguayo and woven into the cloth, and we credit the tradition it comes from rather than calling it our own. Read what we stand on, see the weave families, and look at the diamond weave on the Urubamba, the closest thing we make to a tocapu.

Questions

What does tocapu mean?

Tocapu, t'oqapu in Quechua, is the name for the small decorated squares woven into fine Inca cloth. The meaning of each figure is mostly lost; what survives is their order, their repetition and the fact that they were kept for the highest-ranking cloth.

Were tocapu a form of writing?

Possibly. Some researchers have read them as signs with fixed meanings; most treat them as emblems of identity and rank. There is no agreed decipherment.

Where can I see tocapu?

On the royal tunic at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., on Inca and colonial keros, in the drawings of Guaman Poma, and in museum collections in Peru and abroad.

Are there tocapu on your caps?

No. Tocapu belonged to royal cloth and we do not copy them. Our pattern is inspired by everyday aguayo, whose stripes and figured bands carry their own, humbler meanings.