Creativity is found in the most unlikely of places sometimes. Set deep in a residential neighborhood of Quito, a local Ecuadorian family makes a living making magic happen from a simple seed. The end result is jewelry in a mixture of fantastical colours, shapes, and sizes – all made from the tagua seed.
Starting with a coconut seed from the tagua palm trees found along the central Ecuadorian coast, Gladys Moquinche’s family dries, peels, polishes, shapes, polishes again, dyes, dries and polishes a third time, and then drills holes to make beads. Sounds simple, until you realize that the seeds are small and hard and so it’s necessary to use high powered sanders and saws to conjure up the desired final product.
The workshop is a bit of a hodge podge mixture of rock tumblers, hole punchers, and other mechanized machinery in a series of unfinished cinder block and tin-roofed structures and rooms. It’s easy to cringe when you see them working, as they are doing everything by hand without much protection. Their fingers and hands are put on trial daily through their work, and unfortunately they don’t always win so cuts and more severe injuries can be common.
Tagua has historically been used for buttons, chess pieces, pipes, and a myriad of other purposes for centuries and is also called vegetable ivory. Gladys typically uses the tagua to create beads of eccentric shapes and sizes. But they have also dappled in making buttons and even miniature pipes.
A trip to this family workshop is an experience of creative chaos. Any given day can see the family doing half a dozen different steps of the process and the seeds often lay strewn about the yard, out-buildings, workshop, and their jewelry making room in bags, boxes, or just the ground. Colours pop out from every corner, the result of imported Italian dyes that Gladys herself mixes into the exquisite, and unique, tints. Cooking the seeds on a gas-fired outdoor stove for an hour or even eight, the rich colours soak into the seed to create the vibrancy of the final product.
Today, Gladys has expanded her work with natural resources to include pambil and acai palm seeds as well. The designs are intricate, colorful, bold, elaborate, and unique. Pieces that would sell for ten times the cost in the US or UK are mere dollars here. The photos we have are just some snaps of what friends and family purchases and don’t do her work real justice.
In fact, many of the vendors in Quito’s artisanal market or the markets in and around Otavalo buy their beads from Gladys and then sell their jewelry for double the price. It’s best to come to the source and truly experience the way creativity produces something of true and unique beauty.
If you are keen to visit, be sure to give them a call before you go, and send our best! Jose Luis Toabpanta Quishpe | 0995483580 | joseluiselbrand@gmail.com
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