A standing register of the things Latin America makes Twenty-four entries · written in English
El Universal
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Loom & Dye · Entry 001

The backstrap loom

A loom with no frame: one end tied to a post, the other to the weaver's body, tension controlled by leaning back. Portable, ancient, still in daily use, and it decides the width of everything woven on it.

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Close-up of white cotton threads strung tightly across wooden loom bars
Otavalo, Ecuador · Wooden beams, cotton or camelid warp
Every entry, in this order

Object→Material→Technique→Place

Filed under six

Three entries to start with

A colour, a firing, a cooking step
A tall prickly pear cactus growing in a grassy garden near a house
002

Cochineal

Brushed off, dried, ground, mordanted.

Loom & Dye
Intricately carved black clay sphere displayed beside a pit kiln with a jug
006

Barro negro

Burnished leather-hard, fired in reduction.

Clay & Metal
A brown bowl filled with white hominy kernels on a striped cloth
010

Nixtamal

Alkaline cooking and steeping, then grinding.

Field & Kitchen

Kept going by

Kindred craft organisations

Looms, kilns, milpas, and plazas we share ground with.

Where the techniques are at home

Ten of the twenty-four entries, plotted
OaxacaGuna YalaQuetzaltenangoCuscoTaxcoPueblaOtavaloLimaBrasiliaMichoacan

Also entered

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