By Isla Quinn
Hold one up to the light. That is the trick. The paper is thin enough to see through, and the holes are the picture.
What it is
Papel picado is a decorative craft made by cutting designs into tissue paper. Wikipedia calls it a Mexican folk art and names San Salvador Huixcolotla, a municipality in Puebla, as its birthplace. Strings of the sheets hang over streets and altars at festivals, and the light does the rest.
How it is made
The sources give the method, and they give different numbers for it.
Wikipedia says artisans stack 40 to 50 sheets of tissue and cut through them together, so every sheet gets the same design. The tools are a small mallet and chisels, including one called a fierrito. Some makers use small, sharp scissors instead, and the article says chisels give greater precision. The pattern is drawn on the top sheet and covered with clear plastic to protect it, and the stack is held together with staples.
An informational craft website with no named author says the design is drawn on manila paper, the tissue is stacked over a sheet of lead, and the cutting is done with small chisels and hammers through “dozens” of sheets at once. Mexican newspaper Milenio, in Spanish, gives 50 to 100 sheets, with a cardboard template on top and a protective plastic layer. It says the lead plate weighs 10 to 15 kilos and lasts about six months before it has to be melted down and recast.
So the sheet count is 40 to 50, or dozens, or 50 to 100. The three accounts may describe different workshops or different years, and none of them says which.
Tools, then and now
Milenio says artisans once used 10 to 15 chisels and now use 50 to 100, and that scissors were abandoned because they damaged the paper, took longer and could not reach small spaces. A half sheet takes 90 to 120 minutes, it says, and a full sheet can take a day. Working in a team, the workshops can produce up to a thousand sheets a day. Alone, an artisan cuts 100 to 400. We have not seen a second source for these rates.
A town that makes it
Milenio says the municipality has more than 12,000 residents, and that 80 percent make or sell papel picado. The workshops are family businesses, it says, where some people cut, some glue and some market. It says the practice is more than 150 years old and has passed through at least four generations. The craft website gives the town’s Nahuatl name as meaning “place of abundant thorns” and says Spanish colonists settled it in 1539.
In September 1998, Milenio says, the town’s craft was declared cultural heritage of the state of Puebla. Wikipedia gives the same year and says the governor declared the Huixcolotla style part of the state’s cultural heritage. Two sources, one fact.
Where it spread
Wikipedia says the craft reached Puebla and Tlaxcala around 1930, Mexico City in the 1960s, and later the United States and Europe, and that by 1970 decorating streets and altars with it was common in Mexico. Milenio says the technique spread to other parts of Puebla and Tlaxcala in the 1930s and was sold in Mexico City from the 1960s. The craft website says banners were being made in Huixcolotla by the 1920s and that the craft was common across central Mexico by the 1970s. The three agree within a decade.
Where it came from
Here the sources disagree most. The craft website says the tissue arrived on colonial trade routes between the Philippines, Acapulco, Veracruz and Spain, and that locals began cutting it. It also says the craft is linked to pre-Hispanic paper traditions such as amatl, bark paper, but did not develop directly from it, because amate tears too easily to cut finely. Milenio says the Mexica used cut paper as ceremonial banners, and that in Europe it was worked from the sixteenth century under the name papel cortado. It also gives an origin for the technique that we leave out of this article, because we could not match it to another source. Our reading: nobody has produced a primary record, and each account is a tidy story told after the fact.
Occasions and colors
Wikipedia lists uses across the year. Skull patterns decorate Day of the Dead altars and streets. Christmas pieces are traditionally red or green, with angels, bells and trees. Wedding pieces use white tissue with doves and hearts, cut to resemble lace. Independence Day, Easter, quinceañeras, baptisms and feast days also use it. Milenio adds that Day of the Dead and Independence Day are the dates that bring the most income to the town’s workshops.
The craft website gives a color code: purple and black for mourning and remembrance, green, white and red for patriotism, yellow and orange for offerings to the dead, and bright multicolors for joy. That is one website’s list, and we did not find it in the others.
The machine in the room
Milenio says machines called suajes, or dies, can cut about 20 figures from shiny paper in under five seconds, and that industrialization has been affecting the trade for about 12 years. The date of the article is not given on the page we read. Artisans told the paper that hand cutting has more detail and that the sheets separate more easily. The craft website says plastic film versions resist weather and last longer outdoors.
Questions a buyer would ask
The sources give no visual test for telling chiseled work from die-cut work. They give the artisans’ view that handwork has more detail and that its sheets come apart more easily. Our reading is that a buyer should ask who cut it, how, and from how many sheets at once, and should expect a straightforward answer.
Dates in order
- 1539: Spanish settlement of the town, according to the craft website.
- Sixteenth century: cut paper worked in Europe, according to Milenio.
- 1920s: banners made in Huixcolotla, according to the craft website.
- Around 1930: reaches Puebla and Tlaxcala, according to Wikipedia.
- 1960s: reaches Mexico City, according to Wikipedia and Milenio.
- 1970: decorating with it is common, according to Wikipedia.
- September 1998: state cultural heritage, according to Milenio and Wikipedia.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia; a craft information website of uncertain authorship; and a Mexican newspaper, read in Spanish. We read no museum or state culture page. Day of the Dead appears as one use among many, and we make no claim about its meaning.
What we left out
Peso prices and earnings, the names of living artists listed in Wikipedia, and one claim of origin we could not confirm. We name no workshop.
Roam first. Shop later.