Oaxaca - Weaver's Studio

I am being harassed unmercifully by family and friends for info/fotos of our recent Puebla/Oaxaca trip. I have over 700 images, so I've decided to tease you bit by bit.

The Weaver's Studio we visited was really interesting and I have gone through that group of fotos; so here goes -

Tejidos Zapoteco
Avenida Juarez #100
Teotitla del Valle CP70420
Oaxaca, Mexico
tel fax 01 95-24-40-72
no website currently available

This family has a large airy open house/studio, they live and work here. This is a family business, everyone is involved, even the kids have small looms and make coasters and small weavings to practice with simple designs. They have gone back to the traditional methods and card, spin, dye, and weave on a vast number of wooden looms.

They are using the old traditional elements in the creation of the dyes for their wool; bugs, minerals, plants, etc. The demonstration on the dye colors was really interesting - first crush some bugs, OK very specific bugs and get one color - then add lime juice for another color, then a mineral pigment for a different, then baking soda for something else.

And of course they selected the youngest prettiest member of our groups hand to use as the demonstration pallet...

The shorter fellow is the weaver and gave the demo, and very pleasant funny guy. The taller fellow is Sergio, our guide and interpreter for the trip. He sets up all of our side trips and helps us with all the 'stuff' that can happen. He also acts as interpreter because not all of us are fluent in Spanish.

Some of the dyed wools

Weavers Working

A few additional weaver tools

Beautiful examples of their rugs and wall hangings

And of course, the altar

Here is some additional info on Weaving from From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Warp and weft in plain weaving

In weaving, weft or woof is the yarn which is drawn under and over parallel warp yarns to create a fabric. In North America, it is sometimes referred to as the "fill" or the "filling yarn", and in India, it is referred to as "baana". " Baana" word has been derived from another hindi word "bun na" or "bunai" which means making with threads or strings, as done in cane weaving and other forms of primitive weaving techniques.

The weft is a thread or yarn of spun fibre. The original fibre was wool, flax or cotton. Nowadays, many synthetic fibers are used in weaving. Because the weft does not have to be stretched in the way that the warp is, it can generally be less strong.

The weft is threaded through the warp using a shuttle. Hand looms were the original weaver's tool, with the shuttle being threaded through alternately raised warps by hand. Inventions during the 18th century spurred the Industrial Revolution, and the hand loom became the more robust spinning frame with the flying shuttle speeding up production of cloth, and then the water frame using water power to automate the weaving process. The power loom followed in the 19th century, when steam power was harnessed.