Porfirio Santiago, Teotitlan Master Weaver, Oaxaca

I visited the workshop of the Santiago family on an En Via tour--they have been weaving rugs using Zapotec designs for generations.  They use looms that are exact replicas of the lookms that the Spaniards brought over, and we know that Zapotecs wove before that using backstrap looms.  This is an old and honored profession in this part of the world.

The 2 En Via recipients are two of Porfirio's daughter-in-laws.  The current pattriarch of the Santiago clan

has seven sons--three of them live in the same compound that the store and the looms reside in, but all of them are involved with the weaving business--one of them is working on marketing rugs outside of Mexico.  They share space in the store, but they each have their own style and things that they weave.  Each rug is sold from one of the siblings and the profit goes to that sibling--so as you walk through the store you will notice differences in both what is available (some of the siblings have moved to making more stylish things, like leather strapped purses, which are really quite nice, while Porfirio himself has stuck strictly with the business of weaving rugs). 

The Santiagos still do natural color wool dying.  The Spaniards loved the reds that were obtainable using a ground up female cochineal bug--they are a very nice color of periwinkle, but when ground, they produce a rich and earthy red color.  The region also has natural indigo dyes, and so the

colors that are seen in the rugs today harken back to the day when natural was the only option available.

When we visited the Santiago's store and weaving studio, Porfirio was very active in the presentation--he showed us how to spin, and then he got up on one of the looms to show us the weaving process for a rug that is is making on commission for a friend--he very happily let me get onto the loom and show the shuttle back and forth.  The looms they use are very simple two harness looms, so it requires a lot of skill on the part of the weaver, because the patterns are largely created by the weaver in the weft, rather than warping the loom through mutliple harnesses to create the final pattern.  Spectacular!