by Doña Elvira de Luz

In April, I had the honor of being chosen as Atlantia’s Arts & Sciences champion. While very exciting, it was also quite unexpected. Being relatively new on the A&S scene, I did not have anything that was ready for a serious competition. 

While thinking of an impressive, but doable project that could be done in about 4 months, I decided on something I had come across in other research. Mexican feather work is beautiful,and relatively well documented thanks to The Florentine Codex. I found a few images and got started designing a featherwork fan. 

Inspiration for the final fan. An illustration of a prince from the Duran Codex

Historical Context 

Featherwork goods were specialty luxury products that conveyed status, political ties and the imperial reach of the Aztec. Live birds, feathers, and finished feather items made a large segment of tribute that made its way into Mexica cities as well as long range trade throughout North, Central, and South America (Berdan, 2016). A fan like this one could have been carried by a middle class Mexica citizen, with dyed feathers from domestic birds rather than precious tropical parrot or spoonbill feathers from modern Yucatan, Costa Rica, Belize and further (Brittenham). 

The Mexica had several organized groups of featherworkers. There were those that worked on retainers for royal patrons, those who made items for the temple of Huitzilipochtli, and then there were urban communities, or calpolli, of specialized craftsmen. One of these communities was located in the Amatlan neighborhood of Tenochtitlan and its work was so renowned that over time any highly skilled featherworker was called Amanteca. These artisans would create the feather shields, fans, and clothes that adorned Aztec nobility, royals, and deities. Their work was so highly prized that they were made exempt from taxes (Berdan, 2016). 

Feather merchant from the Florentine Codex 

Dyeing the feathers 

Dyeing the feathers was the first challenge. Yellow feathers are the only one that are explicitly mentioned as dyed feathers in book 9 folio 65r of the Florentine Codex

‘These feathers, which were called yellow dyed, were only dyed, tinted yellow. The yellow color was cooked on the fire; it boiled; alum was added and then it was provided with saltpetre.’ (Anderson & Dibble, 1953–1982) 

While the dye stuff is not directly mentioned in the passage, it more than likely would have been dodder. I used indigenous materials for the red (cochineal) and blue (indigo) but had to replace the dodder with weld as dodder is an invasive plant and is difficult to source if you don’t or can’t forage for it. 

I made the cochineal and weld dye vats according to the description on featherwork in the Codex; first boiling an amount of weld and marigold or ground cochineal equal to the weight of the feathers for 30-45 minutes. I soaked the feathers in warm water and vinegar to saturate them and hopefully remove any residue from commercial processing. Before adding the feathers I added equal parts alum and saltpetre (12 grams in total) directly to the vat as the mordant. 

The red feathers I pre-dyed yellow and then added to the cochineal vat with the addition of citric acid to get a shade closer to that of a scarlet macaw. After adding the feathers I let the vat simmer for about 45 minutes before turning off the heat and letting the feathers cool overnight in the liquid.

The indigo dye vat was a little more intensive. I combined the indigo with lime powder and pectin. This batch of feathers was the most damaged due the much higher alkalinity of the vat. I added all of the feathers in at once and pulled them out after a minute or two before adding them to a vinegar water bath in the hopes of balancing out the PH, but the damage was done by then. If I were to do this process again I’d consider a different vat recipe as well as dipping the feathers individually into the vat to limit exposure. 

Construction 

Front of the only pre-conquest Mexican feather fan, currently held in Vienna 

There is a fair amount of detail in folio 65 on the construction of feather mosaics and the extant pieces in both Vienna and Mexico City help us fill in the gaps. 

‘First they put glue on the surface; with their hands they covered the surface with glue. Then on this they laid, they stretched out, they pressed down the carded cotton. First they carded it well; they stretched it repeatedly; they thinned it out. When this was just like a cobweb, like the mist, 

they pressed it down upon the maguey leaf, and set it out in the sun. Only a little did the surface dry. When the surface had dried, once again they spread glue on the surface, thereby making the surface of the cotton glossy, shiny. So no more was to be carded, since the glue was well hardened in it.’ (Anderson & Dibble, 1953–1982)

The Adhesive 

The first trial I completed was a comparison of available adhesives for both the feather mosaic pieces for the front and back and the framework underneath. Traditionally, a glue made from the tubers and pseudobulbs of orchids called tzauhtli was used to create feather mosaics. The orchids would have been chopped, dried in the sun and then pounded into a powder that would be reconstituted with water when needed. It’s not mentioned if warm or cool water was used; but the Spanish word used in the translation is engrudo, or starch paste, which could possibly indicate that the glue was cooked before being used (González Tirado, 2006). 

Since the orchids used to manufacture tzauhtli are mostly unavailable commercially, and in some cases endangered, I knew I would have to find a substitute for it. After some digging I found a Eurasian orchid powdered and used to make a dessert drink called salep, but genuine salep orchids are overharvested in their native range and most powdered drink mix sold as salep has a number of additives. 

I settled on hide glue or a combination of beeswax and copal resin melted together. Both have evidence of being used by the Mexica and the copal resin glue has been seen in repaired featherwork shields (Berdan, 2008). After doing a trial with white feathers on the agave paper, I found that the hide glue had the best results for the purposes of the mosaic. I decided to use the copal and beeswax adhesive to add the mosaics to the framework and glue fan frame to the handle as that glue would add extra rigidity and adhered better to fabric. I came to regret this as the back mosaic came off while in transit. While the resin and wax glue is easily repairable, it’s also quite brittle. 

Table 1 Adhesives
Material	Historical Source	Modern Source	Properties	Use in Project
Orchid Root Powder	Gathered wild orchids	x	Translucent, flexible, strong
Copal and Beeswax	Indigenous stingless bees	Eurasian honeybees	Strong, rigid	Gluing mosaic to framework
Rabbit Hide	Processed hides	Hide glue based sizing	Translucent, flexible, not temperature sensitive	Mosaic, handle

In the future, I plan on experimenting more with other more common orchids and perhaps some other starch based alternatives to the hide glue.

The Mosaics 

I started by creating the glue hardened cotton layer, pulling apart cotton balls and glueing them down on wax paper to replace the non-stick surface of the maguey leaf mentioned in the description. After this layer dried, I peeled it off the paper, traced the pattern onto the paper and used black,yellow ochre, and cochineal crimson modern watercolors. 

To this base I added the first layer of feathers, hardened with glue. The codex mentions that feathers of lesser value and quality would have been used for this step. Common aviary raised birds and dyed feathers would make the base for more valuable feathers. 

‘ one by one; glue-hardened, one by one. They were known as the glue-hardened feathers. The feathers were suspended, dipped, in glue; later they were stuck to the maguey leaf; their surfaces were smoothed with the bone blade. 

This so-called glue-hardening was all of common feathers; for they came first of all, at the start, in order to accomplish the feather work. This, to begin with, became the basis, the bed, on which all the precious feathers were bedded.’ (Anderson & Dibble, 1953–1982) 

Following the codex I saturated the feathers into the hide glue and used a bone folder to scrape off any excess and flatten the feathers onto more wax paper. Once dried, I trimmed them and glued them onto the painted image with more hide glue.

Final Assembly 

The frame of the fan in Vienna is constructed of reeds, but I could find no detailed information on the exact construction. I decided to use bamboo skewers, the closest accessible thing to reeds, and the same cotton saturated with glue as I used earlier. I trimmed the skewers to the radius I wanted for the final fan and arranged them in a spoked pattern like the extant fan with a longer dowel. Then I laid down the cotton fluff and glue like I did for the mosaic bases, once dry I flipped it over and added another layer to the back to sandwich the supports. I left the center dowel longer and surrounded it with more bamboo for the handle, gluing them together and wrapping in two layers of cotton cordage. 

For hand fans like this one I believe the Amanteca would have contracted the carving of a wooden handle to another craftsman, but to respect the scope of this project I decided to make the handle with techniques I think the Amanteca would have used for other works. The outer fringe of blue and red satinette and black marabou feathers were tied together and then attached with more hide glue, as were the centerpieces.

References 

1.van Bussel, Gerard. “Vienna’s Mesoamerican Featherworks.” Vienna’s Mesoamerican Featherworks, www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/viennas-mesoamerican-featherworks. Accessed 18 Apr. 2025. 

2.Brittenham, Claudia. “Did the Maya and Aztecs Take Feathers for Headdresses from Birds Other than Quetzals?” Feathers from Which Birds Went to Make Aztec & Maya Headdresses?, www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/did-the-maya-and-aztecs-take-feathers-for-headdresses-fro m-birds-other-than-quetzals-1. Accessed 18 Apr. 2025. 

3.Berdan, Frances F. “Featherwork as a Commodity Complex in the Late Postclassic Mesoamerican World System.” Alternative Pathways to Complexity: A Collection of Essays on Architecture, Economics, Power, and Cross-Cultural Analysis, edited by Lane F. Fargher and Verenice Y. Heredia Espinoza, University Press of Colorado, 2016, pp. 131–54. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1hch803.11. Accessed 18 Apr. 2025. 

4.Anderson & Dibble.1953–1982 “Book 9 Folio 65V: Digital Florentine Codex’.” Digital Florentine Codex, florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/9/folio/65v. Accessed 24 Apr. 2025. 

5.Nadal, Laura Fillory. “De La Pluma y Sus Usos En Mesoamérica.” Arqueología Mexicana, 2 Sept. 2019, arqueologiamexicana.mx/mexico-antiguo/de-la-pluma-y-sus-usos-en-mesoamerica. 

6.Anderson & Dibble.1953–1982 “Book 9 Folio 65r: Digital Florentine Codex’.” Digital Florentine Codex, florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/9/folio/65v. Accessed 26 Apr. 2025. 

7.González Tirado, Carolusa. “The Tzauhtli Glue.” Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. Nouveaux Mondes Mondes Nouveaux – Novo Mundo Mundos Novos – New World New Worlds, EHESS, 1 Feb. 2006, journals.openedition.org/nuevomundo/1674. 

8. Nadal, Laura Filloy. “Currents of Water and Fertile Land: The Feather Disk in the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico. Russo, Alessandra, Gerhard Wolf and Diana Fane (Eds.). Images Take Flight. Feather Art in Mexico and Europe 1400-1700: 252-259. 2015 Hirmer Verlag.” Academia.Edu, 23 Mar. 2017, www.academia.edu/32007631/Currents_of_Water_and_Fertile_Land_The_Feather_Disk_in_the _Museo_Nacional_de_Antropolog%C3%ADa_Mexico_Russo_Alessandra_Gerhard_Wolf_and_ Diana_Fane_eds_Images_take_flight_Feather_Art_in_Mexico_and_Europe_1400_1700_252_2 59_2015_Hirmer_Verlag_GmbH.

9.The Mesoamerican Codex Re-Entangled : Production, Use, …, scholarlypublications.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A2855652/view. Accessed 13 June 2025. 

10.Thompson, Deidre M. Aztec and Inca Featherwork: An Examination of Themes of Rebirth and Hierarchy. 1993. Emory University, Master’s Thesis. 

11.Riedler , Renée , et al. “Practical Dyeing and Technical Imaging: Replicating a Colonial Feather Insignia from Mexico.” Dyes in History and Archaeology, vol. 42, 2025, https://doi.org/20 February 2025. Accessed 19 Apr. 2025. 

12.Berdan, Frances . “Reconstructing Aztec Super Glues.” Mexicolore, 5 Jun. 2008, www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/home/reconstructing-aztec-super-glues. Accessed 19 Apr. 2025.