Explore the Craft Towns of Ecuador
If you’re planning a trip to Ecuador, my advice is simple: Bring the biggest suitcase you can find…two if your airline will allow it. Get on the Andean Craft Trail in the Sierra region along the Avenue of the Volcanoes that cuts north to south through Ecuador. It is full of artisan treasures that you won’t be able to resist.
We have a large collection of handmade items. Your support and purchase helps preserve the Inca tradition.
There were called the AKLLAKUNA-
Girls were considered to come of age at 14, at which age some were sent to Cuzco for special training to become akllakuna. These were women who devoted their lives to spinning and weaving for the sun and the Inca state. The akllakuna were the only girls who received formal education, they would be taught religious studies as well as weaving. As well as weaving ritual garments, their duties would include serving ritual food for the gods. Photo by inca Mario Testino shoot
Myth has it that Our Mother Moon, taught the first woman how to weave at the beginning of time. Since then, mothers have taught their daughters, from generation to generation uninterruptedly for two thousand years. In addition to its important religious and social aspects, historically weaving has been central to indigenous women’s economic contribution to their households. In a traditional Inca context, when a girl is born, the midwife presents her with the different instruments of weaving one by one and she says, “Well then, little girl” “This will be your hand” “This will be your foot” “Here is your work” “With this, you’ll look for your food” “Don’t take the evil path,” “Don’t steal” “When you grow up” “Only...
Handmade is a celebration of our contemporary lives, a living culture and not part of a mass imposed, one size fits all, consumer culture where everything looks the same and is easily boxed up. Each of our #incabag items is about people and not machines. It is about the time effort that goes into each piece of work, it is about skill of each of us, the technical ingenuity of the maker, the magic of an individual's imagination. This holiday season choose handmade.
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On Isla Taquile on Lake Titicaca, it is the men who knit. When inca children are at a very young age, their father teaches them the craft. They are eventually required to knit a hat in the traditional style with a colourful band around the head, floppy ear pieces and a white top piece that fell over to one side and which was embellished with a colourful tassel. These colours denoted their availability for marriage. The hat then is tightly knit. If he wanted to express interest in a young woman he could present her with the hat. She tested his knitting skill by filling it with water. If it leaked, she handed it back! This island has been...
