By Ines Keane
Look at the center first. A large diamond, built from smaller diamonds, sits in the middle of the cloth, and almost every museum entry we read starts there.
The three zones
The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the Saltillo serape as having three zones: a center, a field and a border, each filled with small motifs such as triangles, lozenges, ovals, rhomboids and dots. It says the center is typically a large diamond. The Nerman Museum’s gallery guide gives the same three elements and adds that the field often contrasts with the center while the border often echoes it. The Nelson-Atkins Museum describes one piece of about 1800 in detail: concentric diamond lines alternating between red and pink, a white band with red dots, serrated edges on the inner diamonds, and the letters “A C” woven near one corner.
What it is made of
The Met’s example from 1860 to 1900 is wool and cotton with metal-wrapped yarns, dyed mainly with indigo and cochineal. The Textile Museum of Canada says the rich red of its eighteenth-century piece comes from cochineal, an insect dye. The Nelson-Atkins entry says wool and cotton with natural dyes. The Nerman guide describes naturally dyed wool on a hand-plied cotton foundation but does not name the dyes. The sources agree that early work used natural color. They do not agree on how much of any one piece was which dye, and we do not guess.
How it was woven
The Met says pre-Columbian weavers in Mexico wove cotton and ixtle, a maguey fiber, on backstrap looms, and that wool and European horizontal looms arrived after the Spanish in the sixteenth century. It says serapes are usually about twice as long as wide, woven to look the same on both sides, and that most are made of two panels seamed in the center, so a single-panel example is rare. The Nerman guide says many were woven in two identical sections joined with an opening for the head. A travel blog, which gives its dates without sources, says a pedal-loom tradition dates to the mid-eighteenth century and credits the Tlaxcalans, allies of the Spanish Crown. We treat the blog as color, not evidence.
Why Saltillo
A university museum’s collection page says Europeans founded Saltillo in 1577, that Tlaxcalan communities were resettled in nearby villages in 1591, and that by the 1750s Saltillo was a market town where sarapes were traded at a famous fair. It says Saltillo claims to be the sarape’s birthplace and opened a Museum of the Sarape in 2008. The Met says the name refers to the prestigious weaving center in Coahuila.
Two dates for the classic period
The Nerman guide dates a “classic” period to about 1750 to 1825 and a “late classic” to 1800 to 1860. The university museum says the classic sarape was made from about 1750 to 1840 and that its origins are poorly documented. The Nerman guide agrees the origins are obscure. We show both and do not combine them.
Who wove it
The Met says men became the primary weavers, whereas women had done the work in pre-Columbian times. The Nerman guide says the origins are obscure, including who the women weavers were and under what conditions they worked. The two sources do not contradict each other so much as ask different questions. Neither names a single weaving family or workshop, and we name none.
Who wore it
According to the Met, from the eighteenth century serapes were worn mainly by wealthy horsemen in northern Mexico. The Textile Museum of Canada says rural men wrapped in them in cold weather, especially on horseback, draped over one shoulder or worn like a poncho when there was a neck opening. The Nerman guide says that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the sarape became a national symbol worn by all classes, and that mass production then lowered quality.
Later cloth
The Textile Museum of Canada shows how the pattern drifted. It holds a sarape from 1865 to 1875 with a large circular motif influenced by the European taste of Emperor Maximilian, still hand woven but less linear. It also holds a striped sarape from about 1925, woven by machine with aniline dyes, with a design shaped largely by the American market.
Dates in order
- 1577: Saltillo is founded, according to the university museum.
- 1591: Tlaxcalan communities resettled nearby, according to the university museum.
- About 1750: the start of the classic period, according to both the Nerman guide and the university museum.
- About 1800: the Nelson-Atkins piece.
- 1860 to 1900: the Met piece.
- About 1925: the machine-woven striped piece in Toronto.
- 2008: Saltillo opens a Museum of the Sarape, according to the university museum.
What kind of sources these are
Four museums (the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Nelson-Atkins, the Textile Museum of Canada and a university museum), one college gallery guide, and one travel blog.
Questions a buyer would ask
Is the cloth wool or cotton, or both? Was the dye natural or aniline? Is it one panel or two panels seamed? Was it woven on a loom by hand, or by machine? Our sources do not tell a buyer how to date a piece or care for one, so ask a textile conservator or the maker.
What we left out
We left out the claim that “Saltillo” now names a style rather than a place, because only the blog makes it. We left out dimensions, provenance and auction history, and the influence on Navajo weaving, which the Nerman guide mentions but we did not test.
Quick answers
- What is a Saltillo serape? According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is a woven blanket from the Saltillo weaving center in Coahuila, with a center, field and border, and typically a large central diamond.
- When was the classic period? A college gallery guide dates the classic Saltillo sarape to about 1750 to 1825. A university museum says about 1750 to 1840.
- How was a sarape worn? The Textile Museum of Canada says rural men wrapped in them in cold weather, especially riding, draped over a shoulder or worn like a poncho.
Related on this site: tlacotalpan-veracruz-river-port-colored-arcades, christmas-pinata-acolman-clay-pot-seven-points, chicle-sapodilla-gum-chicleros
Roam first. Shop later.