Spanish Colonial Embroidery: An endangered art form

Julie Ann Grimm | The New Mexican

1/11/2009 - 11/29/08

Stitch by long stitch, a needle and wool draw flowers, birds and gentle shapes. They tickle the edge of a shawl or cover the top of a bedspread, adding welcome insulation.

For hundreds of years, New Mexico homemakers have used colcha embroidery to make their homes lovely and keep their families warmer.

Lists of traditional Spanish Colonial crafts practiced today seldom leave out colcha. However, the standard wool stitchery of the region is a rare — and some say endangered — art form.

One New Mexico author's recently published book explores the history of colcha embroidery from its colonial roots in the Territorial culture and recounts how the stitch and style were carried through the generations.

Nancy Benson writes in New Mexico Colcha Club (Museum of New Mexico Press, December 2008) that survival of the craft is credited to Hispanic women who passed the skills to each other. "Creating something both useful and beautiful would certainly have added joy to the lives of weary, hardworking women in the harsh and desolate province," Benson wrote.

Today the techniques are commonly passed from dedicated teachers to mature students in search of a deeper connection to the past. In Santa Fe, a monthly colcha club meets at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, where a new embroidery exhibit will open in a few weeks.

Julia Gomez, the museum's colcha teacher, is one of the few colcheras to use colonial techniques for weaving her own sabanilla background textile and spinning and dying wool yarn. Notably absent from the Benson book, she picked up colcha after retiring from her 36-year career as a home-economics teacher.

"Once I learned about the history, I was just fascinated and I couldn't get enough of it," she said. The popularity of colcha "comes and goes, so I decided while I was here I would try to teach as many people as were interested."

Among the full-color photographs of embroidered textiles in Colcha Club is one of a piece crafted by one of Gomez's teachers, Beatrice Maestas Sandoval of Las Vegas, N.M. Many of the examples from museums and private collections depicted in the book are rarely seen.

"There aren't many of these textiles left," said Benson, who spent hours unrolling and examining the delicate wool items at the Spanish Colonial museum while writing her book.

The museum has "been quite gracious about allowing us access to the textiles, but they tend not to display them because of their age and the sensitivity to light. So there are a number of things (shown in the book) that have never been seen before," she said.

Robin Gavin, curator at the Spanish Colonial museum, explained that colcha has not gotten the attention other art forms have. "Part of the reason for that is that ... a lot of pieces were made as bedspreads and floor coverings, and the historic pieces did not survive well. There are not many pieces in museums today, and those in our collection are not in good condition because of their use, " she said.

The story of colcha in New Mexico begins with the livestock that marched along with Juan de Oñate's 1598 expedition to create a colony for Spain. The group included 3,000 churro sheep, the primary domestic animal kept both by Spanish settlers and Indians in the region, and a source of wool and meat.

For several generations, the tenacious churro sheep lived in the field, and Spanish embroidery remained in the minds of the Hispanic women in New Mexico who were clinging to their culture.

The 19th century, however, brought the decline of the tradition as local ranchers replaced churro sheep with more profitable breeds that had less-desirable wool. Then, as manufactured textiles arrived from the East on the railroad in the 1890s, handmade embroidered goods lost status.

Colcha became popular again after it was incorporated in the New Deal arts program. Local courses were available, along with an instruction booklet published by the state Department of Vocational Education and Training.

A primary source of Benson's book is Esther Lujan Vigil, an Albuquerque woman whose mother was an active, anchoring member of Arte Antigua colcha club in the Española Valley during the 1930s.

Interest waned again, only to be revived with the reactivation of the Spanish Market in 1965. Although she participated sporadically in the event, Vigil's mother, Teofila Lujan, won best of show in 1980 for a colcha bedspread.

Benson credits Vigil for keeping the candle burning and helping colcha evolve from a folk craft to a fine art. She spent three summers demonstrating the craft at Traditions Marketplace and expects to start teaching other students again soon. But there are fewer resources for the materials. Vigil, who works with manufactured wool yarn rather than yarn that she spins herself, said one of two stores in the Duke City where she buys the yarn has recently stopped carrying it.

"I grew up thinking that colcha was a household word because I was around it through my entire childhood," she said in a recent telephone interview.

"I was under the impression that everyone did it because it was a passion with my mother," she said. But when she started demonstrating the technique and "nobody knew what I was doing, I was determined then that I was going to do something about it."

Vigil, who helped Benson gather material for the new book, wrote her own history and explanation of colcha that she self-published in 2006. Her personal collection of colcha includes an altar cloth that hung in the Santa Cruz church as well as large bedspreads created by her mother.

Asked if she thinks women will be doing colcha for generations to come, she answered, "I hope so."

Contact Julie Ann Grimm at (505) 986-3017 or jgrimm@sfnewmexican.com.

WHAT IS COLCHA?

Colcha is the Spanish word for bedspread. In the context of this New Mexican handicraft, colcha is an embroidery technique that uses one stitch. Historically, women made bedspreads using the craft.

The long, overlapping stitch is common in English embroidery as well, where it's called "couching." The difference is that the Spanish Colonial colcha artwork uses only that stitch, while English work typically uses a combination of stitches.


IF YOU GO

What: "Embroidery in New Mexico: Tradition and Innovation," a new exhibit at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art featuring historic and contemporary colcha needlework.

Where: 750 Camino Lejo

When: Opens Jan. 31 and runs through May 24