Vianativa.com has been down for almost an entire month!  Thanks to a great friend it is back up and running!

During this time I’ve been posting on  Facebook.  Click the link to see photos and read about my past trip.  You’ll see photos from a gallery I lived at where every morning school kids were outside my window (a window which lead to another part of the gallery) every morning at 8 am.  And I’m not complaining!  It was amazing to be surrounded by creativity from morning ’til night!

Stay tuned for new jewelry on vianativa.com!

Monday, I rented a car and drove to Ciudad Sandino, where the factory of Simplemente Madera is located; just a few kilometers outside of Managua. Simplemnte Madera designs and manufactures elegant yet simple and eco friendly furniture. I decided why not take their left over wood and deliver it to the artisans we are working with. Now, they can make jewelry with wood that wasn’t going to be used. See below for photos from my trip to Simplemente Madera.

Simplemente Madera Factory

Views from Ciudad Sandino

Model House

Ripios de Madera or Left Over Wood

My second day in Nicaragua was quite efficient. As my first day was not. My plane arrived an hour late at about 3pm, but that was made up for in the airport; customs and baggage claim is ultimately a breeze compared to JFK, Miami International and others. Right after being deposited at a quaint hotel in Barrio Marta Quesada I took out Cordobas and got a cell phone which I am able to borrow from friends. Made calls to artisans I have worked with in the past and set up meetings for the next day. Now that I think about it my first day back in Managua was fairly effecient.

The following images are of two places I visited yesterday. The first two images are of wood jewelry artisans in Masaya, Nicaragua and the other two photos are of Wilmer an artisan who makes seeded jewelry and seeds from the Guapinol tree in Nicaragua. He is located in the north of Managua. Tomorrow I will see some of the samples he is making for me and saturday I will see wood earring and ring samples — anxiously waiting…

Son of Francisco Tikay Making Wood Pendants

Workshop of Francisco Tikay

Wilmer Zeledon works with all native seeds from Nicaragua

Guapinol Seeds

I’ll be on my way to Nicaragua in just a few hours!

I am very excited to get back there and work with artisans.  I haven’t been there in more than a year now — I’m anxious to get new items and designs into the market place and available to our customers.  We will further our work with more sustainable materials such as Ojoche which is a spalted wood from Nicaragua, and will look into reclaimed and discarded wood.  We will also work with a variety of native seeds from Nicaragua.

Will write again in a few days to share my photos of artisans, their workshops and some sample designs…  Oh, the suspense!

Alessandra

A year ago today, I decided to explore the northwestern provinces of Argentina. I was on a quest to find skilled artisans and eager to immerse myself in their world. My trip lasted a little more than four weeks and took me all around Jujuy, Salta and Tucuman where I met a handful of artisans either working independently or in cooperatives. Today our knit accessories are all made in Jujuy by the artisans I met during this trip. For artisans in Jujuy, knitting is a treasured expression of their culture and an important tradition, passed from generation to generation.
Here are some landscape photos of Jujuy and shots of artisan Asunción on a foot loom making some llama fiber scarves for Via Nativa.

A year later I find myself again in Argentina but this time in Bs As. In my first few days here I had to meet Luján Cambariere who wrote a fabulous article about Via Nativa in the Argentine newspaper Pagina12. In Argentina Luján Cambariere is a renowned journalist specializing in design and half of the design duo Satori Lab.

I highly recommend reading up on the Satori duo but to give you a brief introduction, Satori Lab conducts collective design workshops with students of every design branch and experiments with recycled materials, to create funky design objects. Each workshop has a topic about essential values of life and challenges students to think collectively and through their hands.

For more information please visit Satori Lab and Pagina12

-vanesa