Handwoven in Ecuador 

Panama hats are a marvel of handicraft and utility. Handwoven in the Andes where comfortable protection from the equatorial sun is a practical necessity, they are a unisex staple of the indigenous wardrobe.

It is amazing that these beautiful handmade hats feature such a neat even weave and that they can be woven to uniform grades and dimensions that makes it possible to obtain tens of dozens of hats suitable to press and finish into styles for wear around the world. We have had customers handle the hats and say to us, “Handwoven yes, but by a machine.”

We wanted to get a photo of the weaving, so we took a taxi from Cuenca to a small town in the countryside. At a market we found a woman sitting on a blanket selling bundles of straw to three other women sitting with her, all in their beautiful full skirts and shawls. We told her we’d like to take a photo of someone weaving a hat. She declined, saying that she needed to spend her time selling straw.

Two young men approached us, offering to drive us around to visit weavers. Before we could follow them, the women on the blanket jumped up and earnestly warned us not to go with those young men. The seller gathered up her blanket and straw and invited us to her house. There we photographed her sitting on a chair weaving on a block in her lap, smiling in her beautiful dress and her beautiful blue eyes.

Stefan visited a number of times after that first meeting, and we commissioned her family to weave the world’s largest panama, but that’s another story.

Photo: Maria Castillo weaving.