Simply Complex

by R.W. Davis

The pre-His­pan­ic ruins at the Mit­la Tem­ple Com­plex in Oax­a­ca, Mex­i­co reveal a direct con­nec­tion to the mod­ern Zapotec weaver’s art. Mitla’s tall walled avenue, sculp­tured in bas-relief, dwarfs the vis­i­tor. Three broad bands of geo­met­ric mosa­ic designs, pieced togeth­er in pol­ished stones, con­tain the last­ing record of encod­ed knowl­edge and a glimpse into Zapotec beliefs. Repeat­ing pat­terns from the past are pre­served in the threads woven by mod­ern arti­sans whose tex­tiles pre­serve and cel­e­brate Zapotec beliefs. Iron­i­cal­ly Mit­la, Place of the Dead, is alive in the car­pets of the liv­ing.
Along the avenue in Mit­la the low­er band is the sacred cal­en­dri­cal light­ning design. The mid­dle shows the gre­ca, the 4 Steps of Life or Pas­sages: birth, child­hood, youth and matu­ri­ty. The top band is com­posed of styl­ized geo­met­ric cara­cols (snails) that sym­bol­ize the con­tin­u­a­tion of life. Zapotecs believe gre­cas link all forms of life togeth­er.
Fig­ures and sym­bols, neglect­ed for hun­dreds of years, relics from destroyed tem­ples, are fea­tures in Oax­a­can car­pets. Weavers fol­low tra­di­tion with­out full knowl­edge of their ori­gin or sig­nif­i­cance. Inves­ti­ga­tors have spec­u­lat­ed that pat­terns, styl­ized feath­ers and scales, birds and snakes, may sym­bol­ize ener­gy of the sky, shak­ing of the earth and rep­re­sent the dual­i­ty of the body and spir­it inter­locked in the pan Mex­i­can icon Quet­zal­coatl, the Feath­ered Ser­pent.
Zenon Hipoli­to, a mas­ter weaver, born May 7, 1956 in Teoti­t­lan del Valle, Oax­a­ca, lives with his wife Rita and chil­dren in Lath­rop, CA in a mod­ern ranch styled home. He has 3 trea­dle looms in the liv­ing room, which seem a per­fect sym­bol­ic meld­ing of the mod­ern with the ancient as is his art. To explain the loom, he showed a sketch and labeled the parts in com­bined Eng­lish, Span­ish and Zapotec.
His trea­sure is a car­pet woven by his father Pon­ciano, a tra­di­tion­al black-red, two-col­or design with a flower cen­ter. Once Zapotec weavers used only the black-red com­bi­na­tion, but over time with col­lec­tors and tourists, art and use influ­enced col­or. Car­pets became wall hang­ings.
The flower at the cen­ter of the trea­sured car­pet sym­bol­izes nour­ish­ment. “We hon­or the flower because they rep­re­sent food.” The bloom of the cal­abaza (squash) is a Zapotec favorite. Col­ors are sym­bol­ic. Red rep­re­sents the sun or day; black the night, but the dichoto­my may also extend to male-female, good-evil, vital­i­ty-rest. Secret veg­etable dye col­or recipes are passed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, and like Napa Val­ley vint­ners one fam­i­ly can iden­ti­fy another’s work by sub­tle dif­fer­ences. “We can tell right away.”

Zenon Hipoli­to craft­ed his own looms, the largest being 10 feet wide. He brings a portable 4x4 foot loom to art fairs and demon­strates his craft, which requires con­stant atten­tion to the math­e­mat­ics of the design. Geo­met­ric fig­ures are com­plex, but the curved fig­ures, whether a bird or flower or sun or moon or ani­mal image, are the most dif­fi­cult to weave and like­ly to be least appre­ci­at­ed by the casu­al view­er. “When did you begin weav­ing? I asked Zenon. “When I was 8,” he said. His father, a mas­ter weaver taught him, and Zenon had to learn the most dif­fi­cult designs first, the curves. How often do we chal­lenge the stu­dent with the hard­est first, I won­dered? Zenon’s eyes gleamed and his Mona Lisa smile turned radi­ant when he spoke of his father, who died in 2008.

Yarn and Dyes:

“The best yarn comes from Chich­i­ca­pan, a town near Oax­a­ca. They raise their own sheep and have the best hand­spun wool.” Wool, sheep and goat, is used in its nat­ur­al col­or or is nat­u­ral­ly dyed in earth tones. A blue­stone is ground to make indi­go, yel­low comes from the onion, green from the pep­per tree, and wal­nuts or pecans pro­vide brown. The cochineal insect is dried and ground to cre­ate a deep red.

Sym­bols, Ele­ments of Life:

One may see a cru­ci­form and think of the cross, but it’s a com­pass indi­cat­ing car­di­nal points and the Ele­ments of Life: earth, sun, water and air. Browns and grays are earth col­ors. Reds and yel­lows hon­or the life giv­ing sun. Blues and green rep­re­sents water, and white air. Zenon showed me a car­pet with the sun at the cen­ter, which was com­posed of 4 ele­ments and col­ors. I was think­ing phas­es of the moon and sun. “The moon is in eclipse,” he said. But a sliv­er shad­ow­ing the cres­cent moon was a deep­er blue. “Every time my moth­er saw an eclipse she put water out­side to relieve the sun.” This per­son­al expe­ri­ence became part of the car­pet.

Inspi­ra­tional fig­ures:

A car­pet may use any num­ber of aes­thet­ic ele­ments, styl­ized geo­met­ric fig­ures, neg­a­tive-pos­i­tive images cre­at­ed by designs and off­set­ting adja­cent col­ors. “The but­ter­fly rep­re­sents long last­ing life and the cara­col (snail, styl­ized spi­ral) we believe con­tin­ues life, your cul­ture goes on and on and on. The cen­ter is ener­gy, our bel­ly but­ton, Moth­er Earth.” Pat­terns of 4 repeat, as there are 4 steps in life. Checker­board cross­es using squares and tri­an­gles sym­bol­ize the life force and ener­gy. The cloud motif, a sym­met­ri­cal pat­tern of small squares arranged from the cen­ter point of the cloud in a 6–4‑2 ratio is a sign of plen­ty and abun­dant har­vest. Repeat­ing tri­an­gles in an arrow pat­tern, styl­ized scales or feath­ers, are signs of long life and ener­gy. But­ter­flies, geo­met­ric Xs or 3s back to back, are also longevi­ty sym­bols. The light­ning pat­tern con­tains sacred cal­en­dri­cal signs. Squares and dia­monds incor­po­rate con­trast­ing ele­ments often using col­ors, arrows and shad­ing. Some sym­bol­ize God’s eyes and insight into the future.

Sig­na­ture:

His­tor­i­cal­ly weavers did not sign their car­pets, but col­lec­tors have made requests and some weavers are encod­ing their old­est name in their newest designs, their birth date.