Rebozo Textile (2009 - present)
The elegance, beauty and strength of a traditional Mexican handwoven rebozo (shawl), led me to explore the textile producing town of Tenancingo, Estado de Mexico early in my move to Mexico. My interest was primarily in exploring its use as a textile/fabric to create clothing and homewares.
Rebozo shawls are an extremely democratic textile still commonly used throughout Mexico, without religion, race or class divides. Worn slung around a back to carry babies and firewood, elegantly draped around a cold shoulder at a party, coiled up upon a woman’s head to balance a large basket of tortillas, or used simply as a way to hide for the hot sun or keep warm on a cool evening, the rebozo is a quintessential Mexican textile which is handed down through generations, from mother to daughter.
Hand woven in exquisitely thin cotton, with a special type of loom, set with fine agave fibers to receive hand resist dyed ikat yarns, which allows the loom to weave an unusually thin type of yarn, not typical of large colonial type looms in Mexico.
We have worked in this region for many years and continue to collaborate with a number of artisan families, creating traditional and non traditional textiles of the highest quality. Over the last decade many of the older artisans we have been so fortunate to work with, have passed away, taking with them a knowledge base and expertise which goes back hundreds of years.
To create this range of textile forward clothing and accessories we incorporated extremely high quality, thin cotton yarn imported from India along with baby alpaca from Peru and collaborated with various artisan communities from around Mexico to bring it into existence: the textile is hand dyed and hand woven in Tenancingo, the macrame fringe, hand knotted in Malinalco and the embroidery on two pieces was based on traditional iconography and made by hand in Chiapas by indigenous women’s collective in Chenahlo. The cutting and sewing of each piece was done by hand between in our studios in Malinalco and Oaxaca.
