Cultural Studies/Craft The Cusco weaving tradition is the proud modern descendant of the expertise and creativity found in cloth of the Inca Empire, kept alive in our time by the energetic efforts of the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco. This valuable book provides insightful introductory text and beautifully clear instructions and illustrations for how to reproduce the more basic techniques. Even those who never try to use the techniques will gain a greater appreciation of this rich tradition, while for textile practitioners the book is a gold mine, revealing the little tricks needed to use these techniques successfully. —Anne Pollard Rowe, Research Associate of Indigenous American Textiles at The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C., and author of numerous touchstone publications about Andean textiles A beautifully informative new book with only one flaw: its title is much too modest! It not only offers, in patient words and detailed pictures, a primer on ancient Inca spinning and textile-making, it also spins a tale of ancient heritage and living craft. The book's generous sharing of textile knowledge deeply enriches your own textile practice on many levels. Like learning a new spoken language, learning a new craft vocabulary opens up a new culture, with its different rules and definitions. A glimpse into these structures helps enrich not just a textile practice, but our sense of what it is to be human. -Keith Recker, founder and editor of Hand/Eye magazine Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez and her young associates at the Center for Traditional Textiles of Cusco share their vast knowledge of making textiles in highland Peru and also provide a unique window into the meanings associated with their processes. The book is chock-full of photographic details and succinct captions that take the reader through the steps of making yarn and cloth the Andean way. —Mary Frame, author and scholar of ancient and ethnographic Andean textiles This publication, through written words and integrated with beautiful photos, openly makes accessible Quechua indigenous weaving techniques and ancient practices passed through centuries but never before documented in such a written and visual publication. It's a beautiful gift for future generations of Quechua youth and young people throughout the world who are challenged to retain the ways of their ancestors while living in and contributing to the modern world -Dr. Andrea M. Heckman, author of Woven Stories: Andean Textiles and Rituals