Weavings

By the time Christopher Columbus reached the New World in 1492, the Zapotec Indians of Teotitlan del Valle, a small viallage nestled among the foothills of the Sierra Madres in the Oaxaca Valley of Southern Mexico, had a centuries old tradition of weaving textiles from cotton and other plant fibers. In the mid-seventeenth century, Dominican friars introduced the European upright loom and sheep to the New World, and for the next three hundred years the weaver in Teotitlan wove the finest wool serapes in Southern Mexico and Guatemala. Today, the high level of craftsmanship of the Colonial period is still evident in the distinctive use of color and handspun yarns in the contemporty rugs and tapestries woven by the Zapotec Indians of Teotitlan.

All materials used in the weavings are natural including the handspun wool and natural earth pigment dyes. These natural vegetal dyes are still collected from the countryside surrounding the village and cochineal, the world's most colorfast natural red dyd, has been a product of the Oaxaca Valley since pre-Hispanic times. Many of the design elements in these sophisticated weaving have pre-Hispanic antecedents, while others take inspiration from other contemporary native American Indian groups and modern art.

Zapotec Weaving is intimately tied to the family unit. Everyone, women, men and children, participate in the process. Because of this family cohesiveness, the success of Zapotec weaving directly contributes to the maintenance of their distinctive tradition and culture. The family teaching and passing on of these handcraft skills helps to insure the preservation of this vital craft which by-and-large has been lost to the steady march of "progress" in the modern world.

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