We collaborate with craftsmen in various communities and ethnic groups, integrating their traditional techniques with new designs.
Wounaan
The Wounaan (also Waunana) live along the rainforest rivers of Colombia’s Chocó and Panama’s Darién, where they share the Emberá-Wounaan comarca. Speakers of the Woun Meu language, they practise fishing, small-scale horticulture, and careful forest stewardship. Wounaan artisans are celebrated for coiled baskets woven from werregue and chunga palm fibres, dyed with plant pigments into intricate geometric motifs, as well as cocobolo-wood and tagua-nut carvings that echo forest fauna. Basketry—primarily the work of women—provides vital income and keeps ancestral ecological knowledge alive.
Chocó’s Pacific lowlands form one of the planet’s wettest and most biodiverse corners: year-round tropical rains—often exceeding 10 000 mm annually—feed labyrinthine rivers, mangrove estuaries, and towering evergreen rainforest. This emerald corridor links the Andes to the ocean, sheltering jaguars, poison-dart frogs, and over 600 bird species beneath a canopy threaded with orchids and bromeliads.
2. Strip & dry
Split each leaflet to reveal the silky inner fibres, then sun-dry them until bleached and pliable.
