Brazil · Hand-spun cotton thread and knotted-net weaving
Fiação e Tecelagem Wapichana
The cultivation, hand-spinning, and knot-weaving of cotton into hammocks and nets, practiced by Wapichana women across the Lavrado savanna region of Roraima, Brazil's northernmost state, on the border with Guyana. Colonial-era ethnographic documentation (specifically the Ashburner archive) records the traditional spinning technique in precise technical detail: raw cotton spun into thread using a spindle made from a thin piece of cane passed through a round piece of turtle shell functioning as a flywheel — a distinctive, materially specific tool combination not paralleled elsewhere in this archive's Amazon-basin textile documentation. In 2023, Wapichana artist Gustavo Caboco and historian and teacher Roseane Cadete led a project-residency titled Ateliê-Lavrado with the British Museum's Santo Domingo Centre of Excellence for Latin American Research (SDCELAR), beginning with community spinning and weaving workshops in Roraima before traveling to London and Oxford to research historical Wapichana collections and archival documentation held at the British Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum, working in collaboration with researcher Jamille Pinheiro Dias of the University of London's Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Risk level: Endangered · Not Applicable — no UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage inscription exists for this craft at time of writing
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