Mexican handcrafts and folk art

This blending, called “mestizo” was particularly emphasized by Mexico's political, intellectual and artistic elite in the early 20th century after the Mexican Revolution toppled Porfirio Díaz’s French-style and modernization-focused presidency.

[5] Mexican artesanía has its foundations in the crafts of the many pre-Hispanic cultures within the country, but 500 years of European influence has transformed it into a mixture of the two and unique to Mexico.

[1][6] From the early 20th century to the present day, Mexican folk art has inspired famous artists such as Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, José Clemente Orozco, Fernández Ledezma, Luis Nishizawa and many others.

This definition is founded in the early post-Mexican Revolution era when artists and intellectuals were concerned with creating a native identity for Mexico, which revolved around the concept of “mestizo” or the blend of European and indigenous races.

[7] Most of the artesanía produced in Mexico is ordinary things made for daily use, but they are still considered artistic because most contain decorative details and/or are painted in bright colors for aesthetic purposes.

Pyramids, temples, murals, textiles and religious objects were painted or colored ochre red, bright green, burnt orange, various yellows and turquoise.

Red pigment since pre-Hispanic times has made from the cochineal bug, which is crushed, dried and ground to a powder to mix into a liquid base.

Geometric designs are prevalent and the most directly connected to Mexico's pre-Hispanic past and/or items made by the country's remaining purely indigenous communities.

[1] Bernardino de Sahagún describes the various items made from the maguey plant, the wide variety of pottery, as well as about the privileged place that artisans held in the native social hierarchy.

[2] In the very early colonial period, the native artisan class was persecuted and was all but destroyed, as many of the designs and techniques they used were linked to pre-Hispanic religious practices, which the Spaniards wanted replaced with Christianity.

Quiroga arrived to the newly conquered Michoacán province after Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán had murdered many of the native Purépechans, ruined many crops and disrupted the economy.

[2] Near the end of the colonial period, another member of the clergy was active in promoting the crafts as way to help those in lower social positions in Mexico.

The Spanish authority's treatment of peasants and the lower classes would be one factor in pushing Hidalgo to begin the Mexican War of Independence with his famous Grito de Dolores.

This group included Gerardo Murillo, Javier Guerrero, Ixca Farías, Roberto Montenegro and Gabriel Fernández Ledezma.

These were conceived of by Roberto Montenegro and Jorge Enciso, with help from Xavier Guerrero, Adolfo Best Maugard and Gerardo Murillo or Dr Atl.

[7] Despite the support for artesanía by many of Mexico's elite, foreign collectors, critics and gallery owners in the first decades of the 20th century, the pieces themselves were never considered true art.

[7] Native Mexican appreciation of their own crafts would be helped near the mid century, in part because of the popularity of films by Emilio “El Indio” Fernández and Gabriel Figueroa.

Eventually, even homes in the exclusive Lomas de Chapultepec neighborhood of Mexico City would have some touch of “lo mexicano” (Mexican-ness) in their décor.

[7] At the end of the 1940, governor of the State of Mexico Isidro Fabela created the first museum dedicated to Mexican folk arts and crafts in Toluca.

Later Mexican president Miguel Alemán Valdés inaugurated the National Museum of Popular Arts and Industries, naming Fernando Gamboa as curator.

Various states organized similar support structures, including Casas de Artesanías which are state-run store selling handcrafted merchandise.

In the 1950s, this institute, along with INAH created the Patronato de las Artes e Industrias Populares, which played an important part in the protection and promotion of Mexican handicrafts.

To promote Mexican made products, the group organized the Juntas Patrióticas, which has one objective as the exclusive consumption by its members only of folk art and crafts from Mexico.

Much of this was due to the rise of the middle classes in Mexico between 1950 and 1980 who showed a preference for mass-produced items and the desire to be part of a progressive, national culture, rather than a local traditional one.

[24] As in the past, most handcrafted products produced in Mexico are still consumed domestically in everyday family life, especially items such as clothes, kitchen utensils and the like, as well as ceremonial and religious objects.

[3] In Puebla, artists such as Juan Soriano, Vicente Rojo Almazán, Javier Marín, Gustavo Pérez, Magali Lara and Francisco Toledo were invited to help redesign the decoration of the ceramics produced there (but not the production techniques), which they did by adding human forms, animals and others to the traditional images of flowers and curved designs.

Woven textiles were known to pre-Hispanic cultures for hundreds of years before the arrival of the Spanish, using a back-strap loom fastened between a tree and the weaver's back.

[40] Ceremonial objects are produced in every region of the country in all different shapes, sizes and colors, whose sole purpose is to celebrate saints and holidays and honor the dead.

[42] Mexican handcrafted toys are mostly miniature representations of things in life, such as birds, furniture, mermaids, bullfighting scenes, carts and much more, made with materials on hand such as bulrush, wood, cloth, clay and lead.

Since the 1950s, with the influence of movies and television, most children stopped wanting these types of toys for mass products produced abroad and based on what they see in media.