By Porter Lang
Look at the chair before you read about it. Wikipedia describes the equipal as a round chair made from strips of wood, with a backrest and seat of leather. That is the whole object, and it is easier to understand by its parts than by its legend.
The frame
Wikipedia’s Jalisco crafts article says the base and supports are made from sections of palo dulce wood, sliced with a curved machete and arranged into shape. A second source, a visitmexico.com tourism page, lists the frame woods as guásima, palo dulce or palo rosa stakes, with taziste rods. The two lists overlap on palo dulce and differ elsewhere. We show both and choose neither. The tourism board page is promotional, and we mark it as such.
The seat
Wikipedia says the seat, and sometimes other parts, are made or covered with leather. The tourism board page says artisans added leather to what began as an all-reed seat, that cowhide came first, and that pigskin is now more common although cowhide is still used. It describes styles including hand-tooled leather, hair-on hides and embroidered fabrics from Chiapas, Puebla or Oaxaca.
How a chair is made
The tourism board page quotes a craftsman as saying each chair involves about eight people and takes roughly two hours. It gives the order of work: the frame first, then a cushion covered in tanned hide, then painting, then packing. We name no maker. We give the statement as the page’s and as a single, unchecked source.
Where
Wikipedia calls Zacoalco de Torres in Jalisco the main production center and says many families make them there. The tourism board page says more than 200 families make equipales, mainly in three neighborhoods, and that the start date of equipal-making in the town is unknown but the tradition has lasted hundreds of years. We give the count as the page’s, because it is promotional and has no stated source. The Jalisco article, for its part, gives no dates for the chair’s history.
The age argument
Here the sources part company. Wikipedia says the chairs were originally ceremonial, reserved for priests and the upper classes. The tourism board page says Jalisco’s versions have pre-Hispanic origins and that the name comes from Nahuatl, where icpalli means a bench or seat and teocpalli a seat of the gods. It adds that the Codex Mendoza (1541–1542) and observations by Friar Bernardino de Sahagún describe early icpalli as low flat seats with tall backs, woven from reeds and reserved for the noble class. The page also says an emperor owned one, but gives no source, and we leave that out.
Our reading: the pre-Hispanic link is plausible from the codex reference, but the chair that is sold today, with hide and a wood frame, is a different object from the reed seat the page describes. That is our inference. Neither source says it.
Dates in order
- 1541 to 1542: the Codex Mendoza, which the tourism board page says describes early icpalli.
- Hundreds of years: the length of the tradition in Zacoalco, according to the tourism board page; no start date is given.
- Today: common in restaurants in Mexico and the United States, and popular for gardens and terraces, according to Wikipedia.
Side by side
Wikipedia gives a description and a use. The tourism board gives an origin story, a making process and a count of families. They agree on the main material, leather, and on the central place of Zacoalco. They differ on frame woods and, in emphasis, on whether the early chair was a priest’s seat or a noble’s seat of reeds. A reader should hold both loosely.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia anyone can edit. The tourism board page is promotional, and says so by its nature. We read no craftsman’s own account and no historian’s. We have left out prices, output figures, the percentage exported and care instructions, since they all came from the promotional page and we could not check them.
Questions a buyer would ask
What are the frame and the seat made of, and can the seller say which woods and which hide? Was the chair made in Zacoalco or elsewhere? How is it finished and with what? How is it meant to be cleaned? We found a care suggestion on the tourism board page and have not repeated it, because we could not verify it.
What the two lists of woods mean for a buyer
A chair sold as an equipal could, on these sources, have a frame of palo dulce, or of guásima, palo rosa or taziste, or of a mix. That is a reason to ask. A frame made of one wood will not behave like a frame made of another over years of sun and damp, though we have no source on how any of them ages and we do not claim to. The honest description is the one the seller can give: which wood, which hide, made where, and by whom.
Why we do not call it ancient
The tourism board page says the origins are pre-Hispanic and Wikipedia says the chairs were once ceremonial. Neither gives a date for the chair as it is sold today. A listing that says the equipal is thousands of years old would be claiming more than either source says. The oldest date in this piece is the codex of 1541 to 1542, and it describes a reed seat, not the chair with the leather cushion.
What we left out
The emperor story, the care advice, the output and export figures, the price range and the name of the workshop the page features. We also left out most of the other Jalisco crafts listed in the Jalisco article, which deserve their own pieces.
Roam first. Shop later.