Textile Guatemalan Table Placemat Coaster Set

Placemat Coaster Set

A beautiful, contemporary and original Mayan Placemat & Coaster Set

Set comprises 6 placemats and 6 coasters

Choice of bright vibrant colours

Placemat sizes: 35 x 28.5 cm approx; coaster sizes: 18cm square

These Placemats were bought from a Mayan family in a traditional tribal market in the mountains of Guatemala. The women of the family are skilled weavers, and were proud of their craft work – a fair trade price was paid for their exquisite work, and we have set up an ongoing small business relationship importing small orders of their textiles from this family to Scotland.

This is a unique and original truly cultural item, which helps to continue the traditions and ancient crafts of the Mayan people.

Who Are the Maya?

The Mayan peoples of Mexico and Central America form one of the largest indigenous populations in the Americas. With over 4 million people who identify themselves as Mayan, this is an extremely diverse group. Some Mayans live in the steamy jungles of the Yucatan peninsula, others in the rugged highlands of Guatemala. Mayan cultural traditions persist to this day. One area in which Mayan culture is alive and well is its textile tradition. The Mayan people are well-known for the beauty, quality and sophistication of their textiles. This reputation persists because of, not in spite of, the rather simple tools used by Mayan men and women to produce these textiles.

Myth has it that Our Grandmother the Moon, the goddess Ixchel, taught the first woman how to weave at the beginning of time. Since then, Maya mothers have taught their daughters, from generation to generation uninterruptedly for three thousand years, how to wrap themselves around the loom and produce exquisite cloth.

Weaving is impregnated with spiritual elements. Girls begin learning the long and difficult process of weaving when they are eight or nine years old by watching their mothers and older sisters. Around the age of 11 they make their first pieces of cloth and take them to the feet of the patron saint of weaving, Santa Rosa, in Chamulas Church. They go there often with their mothers to pray to the saint that she might grant them the art of weaving.

Weaving provided, for both Aztec women and contemporary Mayan women, their most important link to the larger economy. Tribute was paid in cloth and it was also a common market currency. The more cloth a weaver produced, the more her household prospered.

Currently, Mayan women continue to weave, in addition to their own and their familys clothes, to obtain a much needed income. Mayan women love to weave, as weaving keeps them connected to their ancestors, and within the sacred and cultural Mayan universe. Through fair trade, Mayan Hands supports them in their quest to bring their families out of extreme poverty, at the same time that they keep their cherished Mayan culture alive and develop their communities

Placemat Coaster Set