User:Jupagame/sandbox

History
Mexican jewelry creation dates back to primitive times, where Aztecs and Mayas used them as an indicative of status and, in many times, as prayers to their own gods. Techniques for both jewelry and art in general, have been kept among the native Mexican groups, descendants of this primitive civilizations. Tzeltzales, Coras, Huicholes, Mazahuas, Mixtecos, Tarahumaras are just a few of the wide Mexican ethnic culture.

In the spring of 1934, a young American anthropologist named Robert M. Zingg climbed on the back of a mule and for the next four days rode into Mexico's dry and mountainous Sierra Madre Occidental range. He was going to a remote community called Tuxpan de Bolanos, home to the Huichol(pronounced wee-chol), an indigenous farming people who have lived in western Mexico for centuries. When he left a year later, Zingg shipped back to the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe an ethnographic collection of six hundred artifacts, forming a significant historical record of the lives and prehispanic religious beliefs of a little-known but artistically brilliant group. (Clark,2011)

In the early 1700s, the Spanish Franciscans and Jesuits established churches in those regions. Nevertheless, the building of churches did not overpower the native traditions of the Huichol people who still maintain faith in a number of ancient local gods. (Daller, 1997)

The Wixaritari, better known as "The Huichols", have created jewelry from beads made of clay, shell, coral, turquoise, jade and stone before European glass beads arrived in Mexico. In addition to glass, some of these traditional materials continue to be used today. Huichol jewellery shows a unique and peaceful world conception, says Juan Pablo García, collaborator of Marita.

According to the Huichol people, the materials, designs and techniques needed for making beadwork have always been provided by Kay’u’mari, their spiritual hero and guide who gives shape to the world. With Kay’u’mari as their guide, Huichol artists over the centuries have used beads to create jewelry, embellish their clothing, and decorate their religious objects. They offer beaded objects, and even individual beads, as prayers to their gods.

Is there any human-made object more primal than beads? I think not. They appear in all cultures, worldwide. And most significantly, the study of personal adornment--with a focus on beads--is currently at the cutting edge of paleo-archaeological research in providing essential information on the origins of symbolic or abstract thinking. From Paleolithic times until today, beads have served as a visual language, communicating a wide range of ideas and beliefs. Through their materials, colors, forms, craftsmanship, and in the ways in which they are joined, beads tell us what people valued. We are simultaneously reminded how people have used beads to organize and symbolize their world, and as guideposts in human relationships and expressions of innermost feelings. Beads are the essence of material culture: physical objects that make the abstract tangible. A historical overview of beads from early people to our own age reveals the extraordinary breadth of human creativity. At the same time, it indicates the basic, almost Primitive qualities that have been consistent factors throughout the centuries. The purposes for which people adorn themselves may vary, but the underlying aims are constant--be they amuletic, political or sexual. For adornment, even in our changing and frenetic age, we continue to use and feel comfortable with forms that go back to prehistory--in particular, the simple bead. Tastes and materials may change but the bead endures.(Dubin,2009)

As with many non-European peoples of the world, Huichol people consider beads to be highly prized symbols of beauty and wealth. In the Huichol language, beads and beadwork are known collectively as kuka. Kuka is a name frequently given to daughters born into Huichol families, attesting to their high value. Norwegian ethnologist Carl Lumholtz couldn´t be wrong in 1904, when, amazed of the clearly defined patterns and symbols by the huichols, documented on his book Decorative Art of the Huichol, his impressions about the wonderful huichol art.

The bead work called Chaquira
As Lumholtz describe in his book "Decorative Art of the Huichol Indians", the tribe is inordinately fond of beds, specially of the small mily-white variety,and both men and women wear quantities arround their necks. Strings of beads of various colors are also made into car-pendants, wristlets,and anklets, in a manner which resembles the bead work of the blind in New England. The ear-ornaments consists of round open bead work, which generally represents a flower design, and an oblong extension, which is worked into a pattern with its conception as a serpent. The pendants are suspended, the round part down, by a sting which passes through a perforation in the lobe of the ear. Wristlets and anklets form solid ribbons of beads, with designs expressed in the weaving.