These small vicuña wool tapestries are handmade and locally sourced with all natural materials. Timoteo Ccarita Sacaca wouldn’t have it any other way. Alarmed by the polyester threads and the manufactured colors invading the traditions of indigenous weaving, the artist’s goal is to preserve the intricacy, the exactitude and the mythology of pre-Inca and Inca techniques. Don Timoteo, as the entire artful city of Cusco knows him, is the biggest booster for traditional arts in a town awash with it. He was also the highly esteemed mayor of Pitumarca, where he directed the town’s weaver community along with other art cooperatives. He didn’t come by these successes easily. Abandoned by his father at a young age, he turned eleven when his mother went blind. That’s when she taught him to weave, and he supported her until she died a few years later. Landless and without family, he traveled the countryside to learn weaving techniques, and soon became a specialist in old Andean methods and designs, long tucked away and forgotten. He quickly appreciated the finely spun, woven, and naturally dyed ancient Andean textiles and wanted to bring them back to life. Today, the master weaver and teacher resurrects these native traditions -- spinning wool gathered from sheep, alpaca, and vicuñas farmed by locals and sourcing color from local plant, mineral and insect extracts. Color comes from Mother Nature: Alpacas offer more than 20 color choices in hues of white, gray, brown and black, and the artists leave their wool in its natural color. Plants, minerals, and insects provide dyes, including cochineal that produces hues of elegant pinks, violets, and reds; Qolli that creates a range of yellows and oranges, and chilca that creates the gradation of greens. Weaving requires acumen and planning to arrange the complex of vertical and horizontal strands of yarn for precisely designed motifs. Birds mean love and spirituality; snakes connote harmony between terra firma and the celestial. For these weavers in Cusco’s Pitumarca District, it’s ancient cosmology in tapestry form. Don Timoteo has been recognized by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture as the distinguished Meritorious Person of Culture (Personalida Meritoria de la Cultura) for his preservation of Andean textiles.