The Paracas Textile - a 2,000 yr old treasure from the Brooklyn Museum

The Paracas Textile is a mantle made in pre-Colombian Peru and you really have to see it to believe it (and it's not always on display because it is so fragile & light sensitive--it's under a cloth that you push back to view, then re-cover it when you're done--much like the Beatles' written work at the British Museum!).  It's woven & embroidered & the people around the edge are tiny.  And extremely detailed.  A true masterpiece.  And, like the Bayeux Tapestry, historians and archeologists have learned a lot about life on coastal Peru 2,000 years ago because of what is depicted on this mantle.

More on Japanese textiles

From a friend at the Brooklyn Museum:  Textile Designs from Classical Patterns for Dyeing, from the 1930s. Thanks, ACE!    

I can recommend the online archives from the Brooklyn Museum.  Amazing photos from the turn of the last century, scans of notebooks from Brooklynites in the 18th & 19th centuries, so many cool things.