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Colours of Mexico

The collection of textiles designed by Sara Ferrari with local artisans in Chiapas, is a tool to tell a story about the process hidden behind Mexican textiles and their colours.

Colours of Mexico is a small collection of textiles designed as a tool to tell a story about the process hidden behind Mexican textiles and their colours.

The collection is part of the exhibition “Vision and Tradition”, organized by Design Week Mexico in October 2015 in Mexico City and it will move to the Municipal Palace Museum in San Cristobal de las Casas in early in 2016. As part of a three-way collaboration bridge between Mexico City, Italy and Chiapas, Design Week Mexico invited a select group of designers (nine Mexican and six Italian designers) to visit Chiapas to develop a new work in collaboration with local artisans.

Sara collaborated with Francisca Pérez Gómez, an artisan specialized in textile from San Andrés Larrainzar. The pieces were designed and thought as a tool to tell a story about the process hidden behind textiles, their colours and the connection they have with nature. The pattern was designed with stylized flowers or leaves that are used to extract the colours that they are dyed with. Each piece is in natural rough cotton with a pattern in monochromatic naturally dyed wool.

The name of the plant or flower from which the colour was extracted is also reported on the pieces in their scientific name, the common name in Spanish, and their name in tzotzil, the language spoken by Maya people living in Chiapas, like Francisca. The textiles can be produced in different sized and be turned in to many different objects, like placemats or tables runners, this will be up to the artisan’s decision. As clearly readable on the textiles, the plants from which the different patterns took shape, were Tagetes lucida, Justicia spicigera and Cuscuta tinctoria, plants native to Mexico and Central America which were available in the specific period Sara was in Chiapas. From the Justicia spicigera, well known as Sakatinta, the colour extracted is a light blue. From the Tagetes lucida and the Cuscuta tinctoria, known as Pericon and Barba de Leon the colours are between yellow and orange and their intensity varies from plant to plant.

The poethic part of this selection is that it was the nature to choose. Together with the projects developed during the workshop, designers will display one other project, designed in the past, considered representative of their work. In Sara’s case, the exhibition’s curator selected “Tratto”, the textile she designed for Moleni&C. and Rubelli on the occasion of “A new Italian Textile Story” exhibition, in March this year. The reason for selecting Tratto was the similarity in the design approach used and the message poetically hidden by Sara Ferrari in both projects.