First, I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported the artisans whose work I have featured here. The dollars I have sent back to them in Oaxaca and Chiapas have helped sustain families through this health crisis — Covid-19 — when there is no tourism.
I also want to add that there is a benefit to my being here in Durham, NC, right now — shipping cost is bundled and covers sending multiple pieces from Mexico to the USA, making these pieces much more affordable. Usually, it is $60-80 USD to send one piece from Oaxaca to the states or Canada. So, while I am here, I will continue to work with cooperatives to bring their work to you. I would not be able to do this were I in Oaxaca!
Tomorrow, October 19, I will feature five (5) rugs from the Taller Teñido a Mano workshop in Oaxaca.
Shop will open Monday, October 19, 1 PM Eastern Time
Elsa Sanchez, proprietor of Taller Tenido a Mano, dyes the wool yarn with natural plant materials and cochineal. Colors include cochineal, indigo, wild marigold, wood barks and nuts. These sturdy rugs are woven by my godson and Elsa’s husband, Eric Chavez. Cost will range from $195 to $295 plus mailing.
Here is one rug example:
2-1/2 ft. by 3 ft. — 100% wool, handwoven. Machine wash gentle. Hang to dry.
At the end of the week, I will offer handmade blouses from Aguacatenango, Chiapas, by Francisca. She works in embroidery using exquisite French knots. The bodice is so dense with embroidery you cannot see the base fabric, which is 100% cotton manta. This time, we will have more long sleeve pieces and more that are sized Large and Extra-Large. They will sell for $120 plus mailing.
Here is an example:
Machine wash gentle, cold water. Use mild soap. Hang to dry.
These are the BEST woven plastic market bags I have seen in Oaxaca. They are tightly woven with sturdy handles long enough to tote over your shoulder. Excellent for all kinds of shopping, including at your local Farmer’s Market. I buy them from a small Oaxaca shop that has an outstanding design sensibility.
I am leaving for the U.S. on March 12. Buy by March 10 and I will bring yours with me and mail by March 16. I will only bring those that are pre-SOLD.
First Group: SOLD #1 Red, SOLD #2 Gold,SOLD #3 Yellow/Tan
How to Buy: Each bag is $48 + $12 mailing, for a total of $60 USD. Tell me which bag you want. Each is numbered below. Send this to me with your name, mailing address (street, city, state, ZIP) by email: norma.schafer@icloud.com I will send you a PayPal invoice. Thank you.
Second Group: #4 SOLD Red/White Check, #5 Black/White Greca, #6 SOLD. Multi-Stripe
Each bag is shown below individually.
This is #1, Red and White Diamonds with double handlesSOLD. This is #2 Gold and Beige with double handlesSOLD. This is #3 Yellow and Beige with thick handlesSOLD. #4 Red Checkerboard with double handles#5 Black and White Greca with sturdy single handleSOLD. #6 Multi-Stripe with sturdy single handle
Here is a selection of hand-woven agave fiber market bags and totes, a few woven purses and shoulder bags perfect for carrying cell phones and coin purses. I’ve added tops and a poncho cover-up, too. All from Oaxaca and Chiapas. Don’t miss anything: there are 14 pieces, so scroll down to the end!
To buy, please send me an email: norma.schafer@icloud.com Include your name, mailing address with city, state and ZIP code, along with the ITEM NUMBER. I will send you an invoice and add on an $8 charge to mail USPS Priority Mail. As soon as I receive payment, I will ship.
NOTE: ALL PAYMENTS MUST BE RECEIVED BY MAY 9, 2019. The last day I can mail is May 10. I return to Oaxaca on May 11. Thanks very much.
This is the finest quality hand-woven cactus fiber bag made in Chiapas. This is an original to the village of Magdalena Aldama where the men weave these and use them for field bags — to carry feed for the animals, food and water for themselves. They cut, soak, strip, and weave the agave leaves all by hand. The finest ones take three-months to make. They are strong, durable and functional. Comes with adjustable leather straps. They are works of artistry. The coffee color of the bags comes from the smoke over the wood cooking fires. Each one is different.
Detail, #7#1, Chiapas densely embroidered blouse, finest cotton from Sna Jolobil, $145
#1 is from the famed Sna Jolobil cooperative. Measures 26″ wide by 28″ long. The fine cotton cloth is woven on a back-strap loom. The bodice is hand-embroidered in the tiniest stitches. Moss green against cream, light and comfy for summer. They will be at the Santa Fe Folk Art Market this summer and you can bet the prices will be double.
#2 is from the small family cooperative operated by Rosa and Cristobal in Magdalena Aldama. This is what the women wear for their daily attire. Each year that I go, the designs become even more elaborate. I hand-picked this piece based on quality of weaving and the density of the supplementary weft — the threads added during the weaving process to create the patterns. It takes hours to make a piece like this. Piece is 26″ wide by 24″ long.
#2 detail, Magdalena Aldama blouse #3, from Oxchuc, Chiapas, great beach cover-up or use it for layering, $145
#3 From Oxchuc, Chiapas, and woven by Cristina on a back-strap loom. This is a wonderful, soft cotton poncho in a graphic black and white. It took Cristina 38 hours to weave this and it measures 32” wide x 28” long, $145
Detail, #3#4, San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, small shoulder bag, wool $25SOLD. #5, Magdalena Aldama, large hand-woven agave fiber market bag, $65
#5 (above) and #6 (below) and #7 (third) are hand-woven market bags — best quality. They are originals to the village of Magdalena Aldama where the men weave these and use them for field bags — to carry feed for the animals, food and water for themselves. They cut, soak, strip, and weave the agave leaves all by hand. The finest ones take three-months to make. They are strong, durable and functional. Comes with adjustable leather straps. They are works of artistry. The coffee color of the bags comes from the smoke over the wood cooking fires. Each one is different.
SOLD. #6, Magdalena Aldama, Chiapas, medium size agave fiber market bag, $65SOLD. #8, Tenejapa back-strap loomed small shoulder bag, $45
#8 comes from Tenejapa, Chiapas and is woven on a back-strap loom using the supplementary weft (added threads to the warp) technique to create the beautiful pattern. Use it for cell phone and coin purse or an evening bag,
#9 is a well-crafted wool bag, lined, from Teotitlan del Valle. It has a zipper. Priced at less than what I paid for it.
#10, handbag, Teotitlan del Valle, cochineal natural dyes, $50
#10 is wool dyed with cochineal red from the Bii Dauu cooperative in Teotitlan del Valle who does some of the finest work in the village. It is lined and has a zipper. Priced at less than what I paid for it.
SOLD. #11, Tenejapa, Chiapas, small shoulder bag, hand-woven, $45
#11 is a unique bag with a lively color combination. I bought it in the weekly market directly from the maker. The village is an hour and a world away from San Cristobal de las Casas.
SOLD. #12, San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, PomPom Chal (shawl) or Throw, $125
#12 is a soft, soft, grey and cream stripe wool woven on a back-strap loom in the village of San Juan Chamula, Chiapas, where women raise their own sheep, then card, spin and weave. Use this for a winter wrap or drape it over a chair, sofa, ottoman or bed for Bo-Ho style.
#13, hand-woven 100% cotton bag from Pinotepa de Don Luis, Chiapas, $45SOLD. #14, shoulder bag from Oxchuc, Chiapas, braided strap and fringes, $45
#14 is woven on a back-strap loom in a small Chiapas village. I love the color combo. It comes from Jolom Mayatik Cooperative. The braided strap is a work of art in itself and is of highest quality. Use for evening, cell phone, coin purse and cosmetics.
The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market runs from Friday night to Sunday afternoon the second weekend of July each year. Festivities start days in advance with galleries and retail shops all over town featuring artisan trunk shows from various parts of the world. (Mark your 2017 calendar for July 14, 15, 16)
La Chatina! Vintage blouses, embroidered + crocheted. Photo from Barbara Cleaver.
Barbara Cleaver brought a collection of vintage Chatino blouses to La Boheme clothing gallery on Canyon Road, and anyone with a connection to Oaxaca showed up to see what was in store.
Cross-stitch Chatina blouse detail. Photo from Barbara Cleaver.
Barbara, with her husband Robin, run the Hotel Santa Fe in Puerto Escondido, and are long-time residents of both Santa Fe and Oaxaca. The coffee farm they manage is not far from the Chatino villages near the famed pilgrimage site of Juquila.
Chatino people have close language and cultural ties to the Zapotec villages of the Oaxaca valley. Their mountain region is rich in natural resources and many work on the organic coffee farms that are an economic mainstay. About 45,000 people speak Chatino. Hundreds of indigenous languages and dialects are still spoken in Oaxaca, which make it culturally rich and diverse. This is reflected in the textiles!
Barbara has personal relationships with the women embroiderers of the region and what she brought to show was the real deal!
Chatina woman wears extraordinary embroidered blouse. Photo from Barbara Cleaver.
The blouses are densely embroidered with crocheted trim. The older pieces are fashioned with cotton threads and the needlework is very fine. Newer pieces reflect changing times and tastes, and include polyester yarns that often have shiny, gold, silver and colored tinsel thread.
We see this trend in other parts of Mexico, too, including the more traditional villages of Chiapas where conservative women love to wear flash!
The shoulder bag — called a morral — is hand-woven and hand-tied (like macrame), and equally as stunning.
Fine example of Chatino bag from Barbara Cleaver
UPDATED INFORMATION
A follow-up note from Barbara Cleaver about the bag:
The Chatino bags have a proper name in Spanish, which is "arganita."Morral is also correct, in the sense that all Mexican bags aregenerically called that. Also, the knotted part ( where they stop weaving and start
knotting the woven part), is then often embroidered. In Karen Elwell's photo,the birds in the knotting are embroidered over the knotting, ratherthan being created by the knotting.
Underside of knotted and embroidered Chatino bag, from Barbara Cleaver
To enquire about purchasing any of Barbara Cleaver’s Chatino clothing and accessories, please contact her at Mexantique@aol.com
Chatino shoulder bag, called a morral. Photo by Karen Elwell.
Karen Elwell, whose Flickr site documents Oaxaca textiles, says that the flowers and birds border (above) are machine stitched and the parrots and flowers (below) are hand-knotted from the warp threads of the woven bags. (See Barbara Cleaver’s more exact explanation above.)
Barbara has many examples of these. I was just too busy looking to take good photos!
Invitation to La Boheme trunk show, pre-Folk Art Market.
In planning for a visit to India in November 2016 and on the recommendation of a friend, I ordered a copy of Emma Tarlo’s book, Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. What strikes me are the similarities between Mexico and India and the politics of cloth as a statement of belonging, assimilation and independence.
Emma Tarlo is a British cultural anthropologist and the book is based on research for her doctoral degree. Identity is tied to the quality of cloth, where it’s made, how it’s made and by whom, style (is it westernized or indigenous) and how a person feels about him/herself in their chosen attire.
Clothes are symbols for who we are, where we come from and who we aspire to be. They are also symbols for keeping people in their place by banning attire or requiring that people maintain a dress code based on their ethnic identity.
Oaxaca’s khadi cloth, with native coyuchi and handspun, naturally dyed cotton
Indigenous dress can convey a strong sense of pride or shame. Handmade cloth is more costly than machine woven textiles and often unaffordable to most.Handmade can be code for poverty, class and rough quality. In Chiapas, metallic, synthetic thread is all the rage by Chamula women. It is difficult to find natural dyes there now.
The first section of the book addresses the politics of cloth, India’s M.K. Ghandi social movement to eradicate manufactured and imported cloth and reinstate khadi cotton as part of a national independence movement.
It was curious to me to read this because Khadi is also the name of a Oaxaca cooperative that hand-spins and hand weaves native cotton using the type of spinning wheel used in India. The textile is soft, airy, comfortable and easy to wear in Oaxaca’s climate. Yet, I had no idea until reading Tarlo’s book how closely tied this identity of cloth is between the two countries.
I’ll be writing more about as I re-enter Oaxaca. It’s important to look at indigenous clothing not only as beautiful textiles but as significant for supporting local economic development. Cloth has value. It is a root of identity.
Why We Left, Expat Anthology: Norma’s Personal Essay
Norma contributes personal essay, How Oaxaca Became Home
Norma Contributes Two Chapters!
Click image to order yours!
Norma Schafer and Oaxaca Cultural Navigator LLC has offered programs in Mexico since 2006. We have over 30 years of university program development experience. See my resume.
Study Tours + Study Abroad are personally curated and introduce you to Mexico's greatest artisans. They are off-the-beaten path, internationally recognized. We give you access to where people live and work. Yes, it is safe and secure to travel. Groups are limited in size for the most personal experience.
Programs can be scheduled to meet your travel plans. Send us your available dates.
Designers, retailers, wholesalers, universities and other organizations come to us to develop customized itineraries, study abroad programs, meetings and conferences. It's our pleasure to make arrangements.
Our Clients Include
*Penland School of Crafts
*North Carolina State University
*WARP Weave a Real Peace
*Methodist University
*MINNA-Goods
*Selvedge Magazine
We offer textile experiences in our studio where we weave and work only in natural dyes.You can see the process during our textile tours, dye workshops or customized weaving experiences. Ask us for more information about these experiences, customized scheduling, and prices.
Oaxaca has the largest and most diverse textile culture in Mexico! Learn about it.
1-Day OaxacaCity Collectors Textile Tour.Exclusive Access! We take you into the homes and workshops of Oaxaca State's prize-winning weavers. They come from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Mixteca, Mixe, Amuzgos and Triqui areas and represent their weaving families and cooperatives here. For collectors, retailers, buyers, wholesalers, fashionistas.
1-Day Oaxaca Textile Walking Tour When you visit Oaxaca immerse yourself in our textile culture: How is indigenous clothing made, what is the best value, most economical, finest available. Suitable for adults only. Set your own dates.
2022 Going Deep, Not Wide--Extended Tours
July 25-31, 2022. Oaxaca Textile Adventure Tour: Sierra Norte Mountains. Visit two remote mountain villages where silk and cotton are woven into glorious cloth and dyed with natural plant materials. Come early or stay later for Guelaguetza! Not too late to join!
October 28-November 4, 2022: Women’s Creative Writing Retreat in Teotitlan del Valle — Memory and Tradition. Click this link to read about it. ONE SPACE OPEN FOR SHARED ROOM.
October 29-November 4, 2022:Day of the Dead Culture Tour. We meet locals and visit 4 villages to experience this mystical pre-Hispanic observance, awesome and reverent. Still space for a few more!
February 5-13, 2023: Bucket List Tour: Monarch Butterflies + Michoacan. Spiritual, mystical connection to nature. Go deep into weaving, pottery, mask-making and more! We haven't offered this tour since 2019 and we anticipate it will sell out quickly.
February 21-March 1, 2023: Chiapas Textile Study Tour--Deep Into the Maya World Based in San Cristobal de las Casas, we travel to distant pueblos to meet extraordinary weavers --Best of the Best! Just a handful of spaces open.
Stay Healthy. Stay Safe. In Oaxaca, wear your mask. Questions? Want more info or to register? Send an email to Norma Schafer.
Maps: Teotitlan + Tlacolula Market
We require 48-hour advance notice for map orders to be processed. We send a printable map via email PDF after order received. Please be sure to send your email address. Where to see natural dyed rugs in Teotitlan del Valle and layout of the Sunday Tlacolula Market, with favorite eating, shopping, ATMs. Click Here to Buy Map After you click, be sure to check PayPal to ensure your email address isn't hidden from us. We fulfill each map order personally. It is not automatic.
Dye Master Dolores Santiago Arrellanas with son Omar Chavez Santiago, weaver and dyer, Fey y Lola Rugs, Teotitlan del Valle
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Chatino Textiles from Oaxaca at Santa Fe Trunk Show
The Santa Fe International Folk Art Market runs from Friday night to Sunday afternoon the second weekend of July each year. Festivities start days in advance with galleries and retail shops all over town featuring artisan trunk shows from various parts of the world. (Mark your 2017 calendar for July 14, 15, 16)
La Chatina! Vintage blouses, embroidered + crocheted. Photo from Barbara Cleaver.
Barbara Cleaver brought a collection of vintage Chatino blouses to La Boheme clothing gallery on Canyon Road, and anyone with a connection to Oaxaca showed up to see what was in store.
Cross-stitch Chatina blouse detail. Photo from Barbara Cleaver.
Barbara, with her husband Robin, run the Hotel Santa Fe in Puerto Escondido, and are long-time residents of both Santa Fe and Oaxaca. The coffee farm they manage is not far from the Chatino villages near the famed pilgrimage site of Juquila.
Chatino people have close language and cultural ties to the Zapotec villages of the Oaxaca valley. Their mountain region is rich in natural resources and many work on the organic coffee farms that are an economic mainstay. About 45,000 people speak Chatino. Hundreds of indigenous languages and dialects are still spoken in Oaxaca, which make it culturally rich and diverse. This is reflected in the textiles!
Barbara has personal relationships with the women embroiderers of the region and what she brought to show was the real deal!
Chatina woman wears extraordinary embroidered blouse. Photo from Barbara Cleaver.
The blouses are densely embroidered with crocheted trim. The older pieces are fashioned with cotton threads and the needlework is very fine. Newer pieces reflect changing times and tastes, and include polyester yarns that often have shiny, gold, silver and colored tinsel thread.
We see this trend in other parts of Mexico, too, including the more traditional villages of Chiapas where conservative women love to wear flash!
The shoulder bag — called a morral — is hand-woven and hand-tied (like macrame), and equally as stunning.
Fine example of Chatino bag from Barbara Cleaver
UPDATED INFORMATION
A follow-up note from Barbara Cleaver about the bag:
Underside of knotted and embroidered Chatino bag, from Barbara Cleaver
To enquire about purchasing any of Barbara Cleaver’s Chatino clothing and accessories, please contact her at Mexantique@aol.com
Chatino shoulder bag, called a morral. Photo by Karen Elwell.
Karen Elwell, whose Flickr site documents Oaxaca textiles, says that the flowers and birds border (above) are machine stitched and the parrots and flowers (below) are hand-knotted from the warp threads of the woven bags. (See Barbara Cleaver’s more exact explanation above.)
Barbara has many examples of these. I was just too busy looking to take good photos!
Invitation to La Boheme trunk show, pre-Folk Art Market.
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Posted in Clothing Design, Cultural Commentary, Oaxaca Mexico art and culture, Textiles, Tapestries & Weaving
Tagged Barbara Cleaver, blouses, Chatino, clothing, design, Embroidery, folk art, handwoven, International Folk Art Market, La Boheme, Mexico, Oaxaca, Santa Fe, shoulder bags, textiles, weaving