tlamachchiuhqui (FCbk10f37r)
This iconographic example, featuring a weaver and embroiderer (tlamachchiuhqui) working at her backstrap loom, is included in this digital collection for the purpose of making comparisons with related hieroglyphs. The term selected for this example comes from the text on the previous page to the image in the Digital Florentine Codex. There is no gloss, per se. This example is a colorful painting of a kneeling woman on a woven mat (petlatl) working on some designs (perhaps tlacuilolli) on a piece of fabric she is weaving. This fabric is attached to the backstrap loom. The loom is tied to a red, European-style post. The belt that should go behind her back is not visible.
Stephanie Wood
I have a working hypothesis that the term tlacuilolli can refer to a piece of writing, a painting, or a design on a stone, fabric, and other media (including a milpa!). Thus, the designs women wove or embroidered could hold meaning on a par with paintings and pieces of writing in the Nahua mind. Modern researchers have uncovered embedded meaning in many designs on huipiles. The historical patch of fabric on a huipil, the pechero that was worn over the chest, at the base of the V-neck, often seems to carry designs that relate to tonatiuh and tonalli, seemingly showing the women’s awareness of the calendar and the sun’s energy.
Stephanie Wood
Tlamachchiuhgui
tlamachchiuhqui
Stephanie Wood
1577
Jeff Haskett-Wood
tejer, tejiendo, bordar, bordando, bordado, diseño, diseños, tela, telar, soga, sogas, cordón, cordones, cuerda, cuerdas, mecatl, mecate, mecates, mujer, mujeres
tlamachchiuhqui, a weaver or an embroiderer, https://nahuatl.wired-humanities.org/content/tlamachchiuhqui
la tejedora, la bordadora
Stephanie Wood
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 10: The People", fol. 37r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/10/folio/37r/images/0 Accessed 10 September 2025.
Images of the digitized Florentine Codex are made available under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International). For print-publication quality photos, please contact the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana ([email protected]). The Library of Congress has also published this manuscript, using the images of the World Digital Library copy. “The Library of Congress is unaware of any copyright or other restrictions in the World Digital Library Collection. Absent any such restrictions, these materials are free to use and reuse.”
