Highland Weavings - Online Store

A very light milky color of yarn woven into a traditional Maya matrimonial blanket  for a three-quarter bed size.  This ceremonial wedding blanket is combed for softness and sometimes made as a gift for a bride at the time of a marriage.  Popular enough in other situations, they usually show up at market day.  Wool warp, fine, light in weight, if not weightless.  Threads are thin, whiter wool thread batches available from local sheep.  As there is no such thing in nature as a pure white, the result is an interesting range of yarn batches that can be discerned when you look closely into the weaving.

This blanket style occupies a category of its own… called Tipicas by the weavers, a design style that appeared in early 20′th century, then became a popular weaving expression in wool.  Happy carnivals in mood, figures of dancing women, then rows of squash vines represent a harvest festival celebrated by women on a red band.  This piece is one of many variations we see frequently.  This blanket celebrates gardens and their mistresses.  Beneath and above are typical strong bands, ‘rayos’, in reds, blues, purples, greens….as well as greys, black and white natural colors of wool.  A cotton warp allows strength without weight in this lighter blanket meant to be all-purpose  as a wrapping as well as an accessory at home.  These types of colorful designs were noticed by visitors from the Huxley Archeological and Anthropological community in Chiapas in the 1920′s and 30′s.  Their friends in Europe, including Picasso, began to collect them.

Original design, single bed size, white wool is spun is dyed in Indigo by

hand,  the blanket is combed for extra softness, 48 ‘ X 68″. Weight 3 lbs. White wool fringes at head and foot of this piece.

This blanket woven by an apprentice son in a weaving family,

dedicated to his favorite soccer team. After spending years around

their father’s looms, children begin weaving when they become large

enough to physically handle the huge wooden ‘barn looms’, often

several hundred years old. These original weavings made entirely

by hand of rustic wool thread are not combed or artificially fluffed

up. The wool contains much of their original lanolin and retains body warmth. Blankets soften through use, washing and time. Cotton

warp. Wool colors natural, dyes natural.  Weight 2.5 Kilos. Single bed

size  60″X 80″.

Another blanket made by Maya weaving family kids practicing to weave.  When team Barcelona plays in Guatemala, the whole country is paralyzed as they follow every play on any TV they can get access to.  This blanket has a cotton warp for strength, and is 99.5% wool. These original  weavings are made from scratch by hand at home on very large antique barn looms originally introduced into Guatemala in the early 1500′s.  Natural colors of wool thread are used along with other colors from natural dyes. Weight 2.5 Kilo.  Size 60″X80″.

We have never seen this striking design before, a large blanket

with rows of dancers in red and blue on a natural white wool field, 2

Quetzal birds in center diamond. Wool warp, lightly combed, weight 3.5 Kilos,  70″wide, 88″ long, size ‘matrimonial’  double bed.  Original weaving made by hand from scratch by Maya weavers in the Guatemalan highlands.

Original weaving made entirely by hand by Maya Indigenous weavers. Geometrical  shapes here might refer to bas relief patterns known on ancient temple structures.  A weaver will insert a pattern and explain them or not.  It is not a usual occurrence to find this sort of a blanket design.  60″ X 80″, red, lilac, coffee, green and black on a white field, wool warp, heavy. We select this beautiful piece for the softness of the colors, and the combing. Weft-faced design. Wool warp. Instructions for washing  and conservation accompany each piece at purchase.

An antique blanket was found early this year, 2012.  Our eldest weavers date the piece to the working years of their great grandfathers around or before 1900. For collectors, that period is close to what we know are the oldest extant wool weavings of 1880 at the Phoebe Hearst Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley.  We and the weavers were all intrigued to find a Jaspe method included in the composition. On that same afternoon at our weaver’s shop, several of his uncles and great uncles who appeared to be in their 80′s and 90′s sat together for hours staring at the weaving and beginning to explain to each other what had been necessary to originally create such a piece.  Jaspe uses tie-dyed threads in bundles that are then laid off-register in the same color row.  The visual effect is something resembling speed or a color batch in motion in a narrow pointed wedge.  Jaspe is a method that is better known in cotton weaving, and seldom used in wool woven blankets,  called Chamarras here in Guatemala.  The reasons for this are many, one being that weaving culture by men nearly ended during the civil war. A simpler explanation is that most modern blankets are weft-face and tapestry weavings.  Warp-faced weavings are so rarely attempted now that a weaver will most likely fail to have a strong color row along a warp line without being retrained.  So, to actually find Jaspe in an antique by accident is remarkable, a surprising time-capsule. For the reproduction, a primary difficulty was to find (order)  thread as thin as that of the original being copied. After several attempts, our reproduction here is a good warp-faced weaving, and a close copy of the old blanket we discovered.

Alongside the original, it was necessary to understand what time did to the antique, then to see a new edition made a few weeks ago that would fade and become lesser through time, slowly acquiring age by itself.  We understand that after another 80-110 years of daily use and regular washing maybe twice per year, ours would acquire a close resemblance to the antique.  To describe the weaving intention in another way, one would not risk the pitfall of trying to manufacture a ‘fake’ antique, but simply to insert the correct preconditions for what would become an identical weaving in its own time.   Those preconditions were followed in our process.  In a community of 300 weavers who work by hand in wool from scratch, there are now four weavers we know of who are able to reproduce a warp-face piece such as this one in wool.  There are two other similar prayer-shawl ‘por costura’ designs in other colors in this same category which do not contain Jaspe and are splendid unto themselves.

Before blankets became bedding accessories, they were woven in thinner thread, lighter in weight and worn out of doors, especially in the highlands where temps in early morning and then evening can dive below freezing.   Up to the mid-1800′s, wool lengths for these lighter shawls could be woven by women on narrow looms in widths between 24″ & 30″, then cinched together “por costura” in a visible center seam  to form one wide prayer shawl up to 48-60″ wide and 70-80″ long.  These wraps can trap body heat and allow arms and hands to be free for working or performing a ceremony. This piece is in colors of dark brown and cream colored natural wool, with Jaspe rows on the left and right hand borders in crimson cochineal.  Other detailed fotos are available upon request.

‘Tipicas’ evolved through the 1800′s into a real design style with bright primary colors by the turn of the nineteenth century.   Possibly the new availability of anoline dyes after 1850 helped this happen, plus an increase in economic stability through agriculture.  They are weft-face designs, usually primary colored horizontal lines including basic dancing figures, plants and animals in harvest celebrations. This particular blanket has a simple happy pattern with two rows of ducks and a center row of dancing women inserted into bright color rows.  We know from records of Aldous Huxley with his Chiapas group on Anthropological visits to neighboring Guatemala in the 1920′s-40′s , that Picasso began to collect these  weavings in wool.  Some are present in fotos of his French interiors, and at least a part of one wool blanket was recognized by the poet Humberto Ak’Abal’ in a canvas that was part of a Picasso collection hanging in Vienna at the Albertina Museum in 2010-2012.  Varieties of content based on the same design theme seem to be infinite and we encourage the weavers to continue to weave them.  We will always have a few of them available here.

An original weaving made by hand from scratch in weaving looms in the Guatemala hignlands. Wool thread is made in natural colors of wool, and dyed locally,  Weft-faced, cotton warp.  This contemporary design are made to find a market place, and known well in Guatemala in the urban market.  It is combed out by hand….”fluffed”, more than a rustic ‘lana rustica’ weaving would be for  the domestic market.  All purchases receive washing and conservation instructions, then a description of the weaving process.

According to an ancient Maya fable for children that pre-dates contact with Cortez, Brother Rabbit lost his antlers to Brother Deer through deception, and failed to recover them after scaring the Prince of the Animal Kingdom with his mental abilities and extraordinary guile.  Slightly gory, the fable teaches Maya children they are able to defend themselves with their wits, as does the seemingly defenseless rabbit.  We are reminded that a curious resemblance of the fable to simpler B’rer Rabbit stories suggest that the ancient Maya had cultural contact with the Mississippi basin peoples through trade long before Contact with Spain.

This especially beautiful blanket is woven by the tallest woman weaver in our weaving town… able to handle the large wooden barn looms which originate from the Spanish arrival to Guatemala.  Not rustic wool, the weaving is lightly combed after completion for extra softness.  The same design in other colors is available.  A careful translation of the fable from Maya in the linguistic group Qui’-che’ into Spanish, then into English is available.  One of our fans of this design is a pediatric psychiatrist who uses this design in therapy with painfully shy children.   She recognized her patient’s attraction to rabbits was a natural affinity signalling a clue toward  treatment.