Our
molas are made by Hilda Foote and her friends, all from the Kuna tribal
group in coastal Panama. In their initial art form, the molas (meaning,
simply, blouses) were sewn into women’s blouses, beautifully adorning
their clothing. In The Art of Being Kuna,
Mari Lyn Salvador writes, “Mola makers aim first of all to please
themselves, along with their friends and family, taking pleasure in
combining skirts and scarves as well as in designing the mola panels
themselves. After wearing blouses for some time, however, some women
cut out the panels and sell them to tourists or merchants.” The Kuna
consider the art of making molas an integral part of their culture and
important to their ethnic identity. They live in matrilocal, extended
family groups. A woman’s husband usually moves into the home of her
mother and lives with her female relatives and their families. For
women’s meetings, village constables walk through the streets shouting,
“Mor maynamaloe” (go make molas), to encourage women to come to the
gathering house. Groups of women sit together sewing while listening to
a visiting sayla (chief) chant about the history of mola making or to a
discussion centered on some aspect of the women and their arts.
The
process of mola making, often described as appliqué, is actually a
distinct technique in its own right. The basic sequence is draw, baste,
cut, and sew. To make a mola, the woman draws the design onto the top
layer. Next she bastes carefully along the line and cuts about
one-eighth of an inch on both sides of the basted line. She then folds
under about one-sixteenth inch along the cut edge of the top layer and
sews the folded edge to the base layer with fine, hidden stitches using
matching thread. For a mola with more overall layers the process is
repeated. Molas with many colors and complicated filler motifs require
additional steps, including a wide range of finishing touches
To see our Panamanian molas (we have about 75 in stock), which we do not have photographed at this time, you'll need to come by our gallery
in Goshen, Indiana. Within the coming months we hope to have some of the molas posted on
this site.
In addition to Panamanian molas, we have a few other pieces of Central American woven art such as those depicted at right.
Panamanian Animals
We also
have a limited selection of Panamanian animals created by Antonia Aji
and her cousin Corina, both of whom are Embera Panamanians. The
animals, which are sewn with a needle rather than woven, are made from
the emerging leaf of a black palm sewn around the emerging leaf of a
Panama hat palm (which is technically not a palm, though it is the
material from which Panamanian hats are made … though Panamanian hats
are actually made in Ecuador from the Panama hat palm). To color the
fiber brown, Antonina and Corina first cook the leaves in cocobolo
sawdust. To achieve the purple color, they cook the leaves in gentian
violet. To make the fibers black, they first cook it in cocobolo
sawdust and then bury it overnight in the tierra negra (the black earth
along a river’s edge). The animals are indigenous to Panama, except for
a few of the creations the artist calls “Corinas” (after herself),
whimsical creatures not found in nature.
