In addition to playing and collecting folk music and taking photographs, he studied Peruvian textiles and took up filmmaking.

"Nobody has ever seen any painted figures of this scale before on ancient Peruvian textiles," he commented.

The gifts ranged over all the major pre-Columbian cultures, including Mayan ceramics, Olmec jades and Peruvian textiles.

I love the mixture of traditional, utilitarian Welsh furniture with flashes of colour and texture from Peruvian textiles.

It echoes motifs a world away - in Navajo and Peruvian textiles, for example.

In 1949 he studied ancient Peruvian textiles in Seattle and opened a studio.

All were chosen, Ms. Martin said, to show an affinity between these ancient Peruvian textiles and late 20th-century art.

Some smaller and less important Peruvian textiles are available at the gallery at lower prices - of $3,500 to $6,500.

The Museum also has holdings of pre-Columbian Peruvian textiles.

Others are metaphors of ancient Peruvian textiles and Japanese kimonos.