Oaxacan Weaving
Weaving is one of the oldest and richest of the Oaxacan traditions. They’ve been weaving for over 2,000 years just in the village of Teotitlán del Valle, which we visited for a tour of a traditional rug weaving workshop.
Weaving is such a deep, ingrained part of the Oaxacan culture that they’ll weave with anything: palm leaves, plastic, wire, wool, thread, slow moving tourists. Anything.
I really wanted to write something culturally significant about Oaxacan weaving: this pattern is Zapotec, that style is from the coast, that type of weaving is from a treadle loom (which the Spaniards gifted, along with dysentery).
I had hoped it would be like our experience in Guatemala. Each highland village has such a specific weaving style that it doesn’t take long to be able to pick out everyone’s home base. Kind of like New Jersey hair. “Oh, you’re Exit 67, aren’t you?”
But it hasn’t been like that here, and I’m not sure why. It may be that the stylistic differences here are more subtle and harder to tease out than in Guatemala. It may be that the drive to modernize traditional forms has blurred what were once clearer lines. And it may be that there’s been more borrowing over the years and the differences aren’t as distinct as they once might have been.
Whatever the reason, I don’t know enough to decode the weaving influences here. And ChatGPT won’t take images as prompts (yet – snapshot in time), so no ghostwriting this post. On the other hand, the Oaxacan weaving is so amazing that not sharing what we’ve seen just because I can’t break it down into a culturally significant taxonomy seems wrong.
What I am smart enough to do (just barely – Dorothy obviously helped) is at least break the weavings down by material. Every example here is just beautiful. Enjoy.
Textiles & Rugs
A blouse my sister bought from a stall in the Central de Abasto. What look like solid colors in the vertical stripes are actually open threads with nothing behind them. All warp and no weft. Or the opposite. 
A blouse Dorothy bought at the same stall. 
You can really see the open work here. 
The front of a blouse, with just an insane amount of detail. 
And the bottom of the blouse, with open work and fringe. 
Intricately woven shawls. 
More incredibly delicate and precise weaving. 
Very small woven bracelets with… 
A ridiculous amount of detail. 
For scale, this is 1/4 of an inch wide. 
A beautiful woven handbag Dorothy bought in Tlacolula from… 
These folks. 
Our rug from Fe y Lola. 
The rug my sister bought from Fe y Lola when she was here.
Palm
Weirdly, we did not buy this palm leaf Bob Esponja purse. 
Because we bought a Patricio Estrella instead. 
To hold garlic. Duh. 
From the same artisan who created our Patricio, at the Central de Abasto mercado. 
A stall at the Central de Abasto. 
More examples from the Abasto. 
Still at the Abasto, clearly a hotbed of baskets and weaving. 
From the Abasto. And yes, we own this one. Because of course we do. It has all of the colors. We didn’t have a choice. 
More examples from the Abasto. Just remarkably small. 
Wildly decorated baskets, from the Sunday Tlacolula mercado. 
In process, at the Sunday Tlacolula mercado. 
This looks in process, but it’s a finished piece. This was in a high end shop, not a mercado, so it’s more art than industry.
All cool stuff but… those chairs especially! Thanks for the tour!
Totally agree. We are jonesing for one of those chairs hard. Their web site said free shipping, so my sister Nef tried to buy one, and then they reached out and were all nope. $700 shipping.
But only $40 shipping to Tijuana. We figure at some point when we come back to the states we’ll be driving from San Diego to Chicago, and we’ll have one shipped to Tijuana and drive across and fetch it. That’s how bad we want one.
Yes the multi-color chair! But also, the chicken basket!
Yeah. We are definitely hauling around a small bucket of regret about that chicken basket. We are sad.