A Cultural Exchange of Saltillo Diamonds 7/15-22/2024

I have often thought that one of the greatest rewards of our weaving careers is that we get to meet a whole lot of really interesting and wonderful people, both from around here and from all over.  I've documented a handful of instances of this in the past, although meeting delightful people happens all the time. This was an incredible chance for us to learn form Ignacio Netzahuacoyotl, a Mexican weaver in the Saltillo tradition.

Santa Fe is a UNESCO Creative City, achieving that designation a few years ago.  The folks from the city reached out to us a few months ago about doing an exchange around Saltillo weavings.  We would get to play host to a traditional weaver from Tlaxcala in Mexico, and, one day in the future, to visit with him and his family workshop.  We were excited by all of this, but a bit anxious to meet a fellow weaver representing what we have always seen as an important source of inspiration, design, and technique, for our weaving tradition.

So we tried to recommend a week's worth of interesting and worthwhile experiences for Nacho.  His name is Ignacio Netzahualcoyotl.  It's a mouthful, so we all tried to pronounce it properly but continued to call him Nacho, which seemed to be okay. 

Our outings included visits to museums and time with some other artists both Native American and Hispano.  We also met with folks from the city of Santa Fe and its Arts Commission, who had been responsible for this, and from the Mexican Consulate in Albuquerque.  We also got to spend a considerable amount of time together at Centinela, dyeing and weaving and looking at even more weavings.

I will readily admit that my love of looking very carefully at old textiles is something I can't hide.  This time we got to hear from a whole new and different understanding of what we were looking at.   We visited the newly renamed Nuevo Mexicano Heritage Arts Museum to visit with their collections, as well as the Museum of International Folk Arts collections.  We went to see exhibits at the Wheelright Museum and the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture which had the Horizons exhibit of Diné Textiles on display.  So we got to talk about all of the New Mexican cultures that connected to our culture and our weaving tradition, both the familiar and not so familiar.

We spent a day looking at the most amazing collection of Saltillos.  We went through some different historical and stylistic groups of Saltillos, talking about why some are much finer than others and whether the older ones were finer than the newer ones or vice versa.  We talked a lot about the logic of different approaches, comparing the observations of the collector and what we as weavers can infer from the pieces. 

When we got to spend time here at Centinela we talked about the very methodical and thought-through approach Nacho takes to his design process.  It gives him a different kind of freedom to weave what he wants, and to work it out on paper in ways we don't.  I was very impressed.  I thought a lot about whether a system like that would be useful to me in my work, but I realized that it kind of broke rules that I have always woven with, and put in place other ideas that I assume would become guiding rules too.  Which all presents a really interesting framework of thinking about our tradition and approach to different parts of it.  What kinds of thinking helps for Chimayo weaving that might be less helpful for Saltillo pieces?  How could we improve our approach to weaving curves?  Does it help to weave over or under a selvage?  What is the center of a warp?  Do I need to have a center thread?  We spent time talking about the names of elements Nacho uses, some of which we use too.

The sharing around dyeing was interesting too.  We actually were using some dyes we haven't used a lot of, as well as indigo, which Nacho was, of course, knowledgeable about.  He showed Irvin a shading technique that is very important in Saltillo weaving that we haven't really done.  We got several people to go into the irrigation ditch to rinse yarn, which was, I think, a new experience for them. 

Nacho had spoken off and on about weaving on one of our looms after seeing so many traditional textiles.   He started weaving late in the day one day, with a bunch of us looking on.  I even climbed on the loom to record his weaving.  Fortunately, we didn't make him too terribly uncomfortable.  The little piece is full of symbols, including a reference to the fact that when Nacho finally met the two of us we were both wearing black pants and red shirts.  But the gift of the shared Saltillo diamond is central to the piece.  Those diamonds still are the center of our shared worlds.