Maria Luisa & Jose Luis

Maria Luisa comes from a family of four generations of weavers, and is the sister of Manos Zapotecas weavers Paco and Omar. She and her husband José Luis have two sons, the younger one in high school and the older one an accounting student at the University of Oaxaca.

Though Maria Luisa enjoys every part of the weaving process, it’s combining colors that really makes her artistic heart sing. She’s also incredibly creative at making new products, and when asked about creating a prototype glasses case, immediately pulled out a woven pencil holder she’d made for her college student son to carry in his backpack. Her purses are studies in subtle and complementary color-blocking and traditional patterns.

José Luis didn’t begin to weave until he married Maria Luisa more than 20 years ago. One of 11 children in a farming family, he had learned to sew when he was a student in Veracruz. He does the stitching and leather finish work for Maria Luisa’s purses, with near-perfect seams and detailing. A heavy-duty sewing machine with industrial needles handles the heavy leather, but it’s his precision and eagle eye for detail that are the icing on the cake to his wife’s beautiful purses.

The family lives in Tlacochahuaya, a small town just a few miles away from Teotitlán del Valle, where most of the other Manos Zapotecas weavers live. The shop inside of their home is spotlessly clean and arranged with an eye for beauty, with purses hanging from a wooden rack and rugs, cosmetic bags, pillow covers and coin purses lined up neatly on tables.

But there is always room to grow. “If we had a little more money with more sales,” muses Maria Luisa, “I would love for us to be able to upgrade our workshop,” she says. “I’d like to buy another sewing machine and maybe even get air conditioning one day!” (The shop is located in a semi-enclosed area under the deep veranda roof of the house, with one side open to the elements, and like most of the houses here is built around a central courtyard.)

“Above all, I want to make sure that our sons get an education,” she says. “We want them to become professionals who can do any kind of work that they want.” She herself wonders if she hadn’t have become a weaver, might she have become an elementary school teacher, or even an accountant.

“Weaving is our life now,” she says, “and it is a life full of color.”