How It All Begins

Like his village, Manuel López Espinal seems to have stepped straight out of a novel by Gabriel García Márquez.  Solitude and fatality have conspired with time to mark his face, as they have marked the deserted streets of the little town of Pilé, with its thousand inhabitants.

The town, which is hidden away at the end of an interminable dust road, is home to the best straw weavers in the world: those who make the “montecristis”. These artisans with their golden hands have always woven knowledgeably, artistically, with the obstinacy of insistence on perfect work and an object that is unique. In his house built on stilts, made of wood and bamboo, Manuel who is one of the village’s maestros, has been weaving since the break of dawn. He knows his straw, which likes the softness of the early morning air and takes a shape perfectly as long as one avoids the hours of intense sunshine.

The Art of Weaving

Behind a wooden stand made of a shaft with three legs, which serves as a support for the form and for his hat, he weaves. His torso is supported by other forms which he has added so as to take his position more comfortable and maintain the piece he is working on. His head is lowered, and he is gazing into the straw as he works on it. His hands are sure, agile and infinitely gentle, moving quickly. He weaves with three fingers of each hand, whose nails are fine, hard and extremely long; these are the tools of his trade. To achieve the best shape, he dips the ends of his fingers from time to time in a little bowl of water placed beside him. This is how he keeps the straw damp. Like the other weavers of the village, Manuel awaits the sun. He will have worked for almost three hours in this morning. It will then be time, after a coffee, to go out and help in the fields. Weaving will not begin again until the evening, at the hour of prayer, when night falls and coolness returns to the air.

By the light of a bulb or a candle, the ancestral work will then recommence for several hours. For generations, this is what weaving has been all about.

An Old Trade - Panama Hat Weaving

The old weaver remembers having learnt his trade at the age of twelve, more than sixty years ago. He has never stopped since then, and has himself taught his children the secrets he learnt from his father. And so it goes life in this little town in a remote corner of the world. The night is full and the stars have invaded the sky of Pilé. It is fatigue that forces the artisan to call a halt. He covers the hat with a cotton cloth, which will protect it from dust and insects. He is proud of the color of his work: a soft uniform, luminous ivory color, which he hopes will be spotless and without the least imperfection.

He has chosen the straw himself; generally he buys it from María López de Delgado who lives just a few houses from his own. Maria does not do any weaving herself, her role is to treat the straw. She too learned he trade from her mother and will pass it on her children. This straw, the vegetable fibre called “toquilla” in this part of the country, grows at a few hours’ walk from here in this same province of Manabí, though also in the provinces of Guayas and Esmeralda. Its qualities, which are unique, are the result of a hot, damp climate and a coastal soil which is particularly fertile, rich in salt and lime.

The Source of the Toquilla - Pilé, Manglar Alto, Olón, Valdivia

The largest plantations of “toquilla” are fifteen kilometers from the coast, on the lower slopes of the western cordillera, swept by cool winds between the rainy season and the tropical moistness. The plants, which belong to the palm family, are long, high and light, of a fine bright green. The end of their stalks are adorned with leaves which spread out like a fan. It is these leaves which, as shoots that have not yet fully developed, are cut for turning into straw. They are harvested throughout the year, but the time when cutting takes place is important because the shoot, still sheathed in green, must be young and yet at the same time already firm. Whether it is a reality or just a belief, the phases of the moon have as much importance for the cutters as the age of the plant or the temperature of the day. Poetry remains an influence, amidst all this.

The “toquilla” plantations of Pilé, Manglar Alto, Olón, Valdivia and elsewhere are veritable tropical forest. They are worked by the villagers, who often get the actual cutting of the plants done by “pajeros”.
The shoots, or sheaths of immature leaves, look like stalk of about a meter in length and a centimeter in diameter. In Ecuador they are called “cogollos”. Gathered together in bundles, the green straw is then transported by lorry or by mule, according to its destination.

Preparing Toquilla - Part 5

As she does every week, María López de Delgado, has chosen her toquilla. The firm green stalk pass through her expert hands one after the other. With a knife, she makes a notch in the middle of the stalk and frees the stretched- out, soft, pale leaves; these she separates from the veins, filaments and other thick parts, already mature, which have to be thrown away.

There remains no more than a sheaf of silky “ribbons” held together by a small piece of stalk. These are boiled in large earthen ware pots for about twenty minutes, then dried in the wind, away from the rays of the sun for one or two days. At this point, Maria’s house disappears for a time behind a huge curtain of vegetable matter. The “cogollos”, which are hung on ropes, dance in the wind, and the ribbons begin their process of retraction. They roll up upon themselves, to the point where they form perfectly cylindrical shafts, blond and fine, which Maria watches over tirelessly. She shakes them so as to separate them properly, because if they happened to dry too close to each other they could stick together, and would then be unusable.

The Story Behind the Montecristi Hat - Part 6

Maria’s task is long and thankless. It needs a great deal of patience. But she also knows that her role is determinant for the quality of the future hat. The color and strength of the hat will depend on the way she treats the straw. And she works at it with all the pride she takes in a job well done. The last stage is to bleach the “toquilla”. After being washed once more, the straw is laid on a clay slab over a brazier in which sulphur is burnt for an hour or two. This produces the subtle ivory like color. The curtain of vegetable matter forms again, for a last drying. Then the dry straw is selected according to the whiteness, suppleness, dimension and fineness of the fiber. The quality of a panama, and thus its price, depends, to begin with, on this selection process.