I have been an avid traveler all my life. In my younger years most of my travel was done on a shoestring budget, either solo or with a traveling companion, which led to many wonderful adventures and a number of less than wonderful misadventures. But in the past couple decades, I have discovered the joys and enrichment of traveling with small groups on tours focused on exploring textiles in other cultures.
Not only have all the logistics of in-country transportation, lodging, and entries to museums and other sites been taken care of, but you share your experiences with people who have similar interests and often become friends well beyond the time you are traveling together. You also have opportunities to visit villages and artisans that you might have a difficult time arranging on your own and it is much easier to take lessons or workshops in textile techniques directly from the practitioners and masters of those techniques.
I have traveled to Peru with Andean Textile Arts four times now and attended all three amazing Tinkuy international textile conferences. Each tour and event has been filled with demonstrations of everything from shearing llamas to spinning and dyeing the wool, from setting up scaffold warps to weaving an astounding array of techniques that are in many cases found nowhere else in the world. And in all cases we are invited to not only be observers, but to jump in and try all these processes for ourselves.
It is both a wonderful and often a humbling experience to try your hand at a process that people in other cultures have been doing since they were quite young— and their forebears have been practicing for many generations. There is nothing like direct experience for truly understanding and appreciating the work involved in a technique that longtime practitioners make look easy and natural.
In 2024 I had the opportunity to travel as a board representative with ATA to Bolivia for my first time. A new experience for me was seeing a group with Artecampo outside of Santa Cruz growing jipi japa palm fibers, preparing and dyeing the stalks, and then weaving them into baskets, hats, and other items. Visiting the ASUR museum and shop we also saw historical examples of Jalq’a and Tarabuco weaving, as well as women weaving these on frame looms propped against a wall on the outside of the museum.
I had long admired and been intrigued by the intricately woven fantastical creatures that fill the spaces in the beautiful red and black Jalq’a textiles and wondered just how they were done. After nearly an hour of sitting on the ground working on one of these frame looms myself, I still am not sure I quite understand the technique, but I have an enhanced appreciation for the work involved, as well as the imagination of the minds that create these textiles.
Traveling to other cultures with a focus on learning about their textiles gives you an instant connection to artisans throughout the world, whether you share a language or not. It creates opportunities to experience and appreciate their textile practices, and it gives you a window into how people in different cultures think. It has easily become my favorite way of traveling.
