Mopa Mopa: A Beginner's Guide to a Dying Art

What is Mopa Mopa?

Mopa mopa, also known as Barniz de Pasto, is a millennia-old craft that is unique to the highlands of southern Colombia. Mopa mopa is the art of decorating wooden objects with resin from the mopa mopa tree, which is found only on the slopes of the Andes mountains. To create barniz art, artisans clean and carefully stretch this resin into thin sheets, from which they cut intricate patterns; the process is simple, but requires a lot of skill and coordination. With a little heat, these sheets can be stuck to wood carvings and layered to form beautiful designs. Mopa mopa designs can be incredibly intricate, and even small objects can take days to decorate.

**An artisan begins his flower design by carefully placing a petal of mopa mopa**

The art of mopa mopa has played a big role in shaping the culture of southern Colombia. The resin has been found in everything from ancient burials to ceremonial Incan cups, and was one of the region’s most important industries during colonial times. The craft was so highly valued that for centuries, silver was used to give it extra luster and native peoples brought beads of the resin with them to the grave. This tradition is not an easy one, however; there are only a handful of masters still practicing the craft.

Join us as we explore Mopa Mopa, an intricate traditional craft that paints a vivid picture of Southern Colombian heritage through its ancient techniques and cultural resonance.

The Ancient Roots of Mopa Mopa

While much of the history of this craft has been lost to time and colonization, what we do know gives us a glimpse into the craft’s evolution and cultural importance. The earliest known use dates back 1000 years. Beads of mopa mopa have been found in grave sites among the ruins of San Augustin and other sites dotted around the region. These early examples were already complex, with dye being worked into the resin to give it color, and the colored resins layered to make patterns. The earliest written records, from 1582, seem to describe the craft in its modern form as originating in the village of Timaná, close to where most resin collecting is still done. Unfortunately, no examples or depictions of this early work survive; meaning, we can only guess at its designs or importance to local people.

**Offerings being brought up the temple steps. The second offering is a pair of qeros.**

Interestingly, there is one other example of mopa mopa in South America. Around the time Columbus reached America, the Incan empire was expanding into southern Colombia and developing its own mopa mopa tradition. Whether the Inca discovered the craft in their explorations and brought it home with them or developed it independently, we may never know; but from that point on through the next 300 years the Inca used mopa mopa sheets to decorate their ceremonial drinking cups.

These cups, or qeros, were used to cement diplomatic relations through ritual drinking of alcoholic chicha. Unlike the mopa mopa tradition we know today, the Inca inlaid the mopa mopa sheets into their wooden cups so they were flush with the outside. In other respects the tradition is largely similar.

While the Incan tradition of mopa mopa eventually died out in the central Andes, the craft not only survived in its native Colombia but flourished. Barniz developed roots in the city of Pasto, across the Andes from Timaná. When the Europeans discovered the craft they became enamored with it, and despite Pasto’s remoteness, went to great lengths to bring it out of Colombia and across the ocean. At the time, processing and dying the resin was all done by chewing it by mouth. Decorations were applied not just to wood, but also to dried gourds. Artisans began adding silver leaf to their work to make it sparkle, with a thin sheet of mopa mopa over the silver leaf for color. Examples from this period still exist, and the pieces not owned by museums can go for tens of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, the boom times didn’t last, and as Colombia went through its own troubled times the mopa mopa industry struggled as well. Demand for the craft from Europe weakened before disappearing. With few prospects for making a living, not many locals are willing to put in the time and effort to become masters. Today, only a handful barniz masters are left, and in 2020 UNESCO declared mopa mopa a craft in critical danger of dying out.

In the Workshop: Crafting Barniz de Pasto

The process of creating mopa mopa all starts with the mopa mopa tree. Just outside the city of Mocoa, where the Andes mountains meet the Amazon rain forest, harvesters venture out to collect the tree’s resin. This can only be done twice a year when the young leaf buds sprout, protected under a ball of rubbery sap. Once the harvesters have finished, the artisans travel across the Andes on the perilous Trampolin de la Muerte road to collect enough resin for the next six months of work.

**Gilberto Granja puts the finishing touches on a bowl.**

When the resin arrives at the workshop, the artisan plucks a few buds at a time from their stash and softens them in boiling water, working out the impurities by kneading it. Once ready, the warm resin will be kneaded with dyes. To make the sheets of mopa mopa two artisans stretch the resin until it begins to flatten. While holding it with their teeth, they use the tips of their fingers to pull evenly outward until the sheet is thinner than a credit card.

When they have made sheets for every color needed, the artistry can truly begin. Fine blades are used to cut out each piece of the design. These pieces are laid carefully onto the form being decorated. . These can be boxes, bowls, plates, or even furniture from the local wood workers. After each layer of mopa mopa, the piece is quickly heated over a flame. This softens the resin and helps it bind to the wood. This process will be repeated many times to build up the design, and it can take days to finish a single piece. Each completed work will get a final coat of lacquer to protect it. Master barniz artisans, also known as barnizadors, have their own personal mark that they will add to their pieces.

The Culture Behind the Craft

**A mopa mopa chest from Pasto, Colombia in the 17th-18th centuries (LACMA museum collection).**

While we don’t know of any surviving examples of mopa mopa from Timaná and the southern Colombian tradition, there are a number of surviving Incan qeros with mopa mopa designs. Qeros existed from the middle of the first millennium, but mopa mopa was only incorporated into the design around the time the Incan empire expanded into southern Colombia. Qeros are ceremonial cups made in pairs for the ritual exchanging of chicha, a fermented corn drink. Each cup would stay with a different person, which they would then bring together for the ceremony. In this way, political relationships were established and maintained.

While modern barnizadors place layers of mopa mopa on top of the wood, qero artisans used the mopa mopa sheets as an inlay; they would carve out a flat section on the cup and fit a sheet into the carving so that it was flush with the rest of the cup. Early qeros used geometric patterns, but as European narrative styles were incorporated, the designs became more extensive and began to include people and animals.

**The traditional San Agustin style on a jewelry box decorated by Gilberto Granja.**

The mopa mopa arts of Pasto use finer sheets than the Inca did, and lay them freely on the wooden surface to create a pattern, like arranging a mosaic. Two styles of barniz were used during colonial times: matte barniz and barniz briliante. Matte barniz uses individual sheets of dyed or clear mopa mopa to form a pattern, while barniz briliante was more complicated; it required layering mopa mopa and silver leaf to give the piece a sparkling finish. In the barniz briliante style, the artisan would start with laying a thick base layer of mopa mopa before adding a double layer of silver leaf and very thin mopa mopa. The silver sandwiched in the middle made the piece sparkle, while the thin layer of mopa mopa protected it from tarnish and could either be clear or given a translucent dye to color it. These pieces are very elaborate, and many are still tarnish-free hundreds of years later.

One of the oldest patterns still used comes from the ruins of San Agustín. This was the first pattern mopa mopa master Gilberto Granja learned 60 years ago. It borrows its imagery from the megalithic stone monuments of the nearby UNESCO world heritage site where the very first evidence of mopa mopa art was found. Other popular motifs include animals and plants inspired by old illuminated manuscripts.

Unfortunately, outside of a few beads, no examples of precolonial work survive; even the origin of the word mopa mopa is lost. Outside of the tree and the craft no one knows if it had other meanings or if the craft held spiritual significance. Though much is lost for good, with more research it might might be possible discover more about this mysterious craft. It’s a possibility that some of the remaining pieces are even from the old Timaná tradition.

**Master artisan Gilberto Granja showing off the San Agustin style he first leaned to make.**

Meet the Mopa Mopa Artisans

One of the master craftsmen we work with is Gilberto Granja. As a young man in the 1960s, he found work as an apprentice in one of the barnizador workshops in Pasto. His first task was cutting out patterns for San Agustín-style designs, during which he learned the patterns from stone remnants of the very first people known to have worked with mopa mopa. After a few years of learning the craft, he set out to start his own workshop. He still runs this workshop with his son, Oscar.

Gilberto Granja is now recognized as a master craftsman with 60 years spent perfecting his craft. The family workshop still makes the old styles Gilberto originally learned, but also innovates, experimenting with new patterns and colors. They have also opened their workshop to students in order to pass on the skills, knowledge and traditions of Pasto. Hopefully, among them is the next master craftsman.

Preserving the Tradition: A Craft Under Threat

In 2020 UNESCO declared mopa mopa an “intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding”, but this has done little to help the craft. Already struggling, the craftsmen and their businesses were hit hard by COVID-19. As with many traditional crafts, the pandemic resulted in much lower sales. Many craftsmen were forced to close shop: some temporarily, some permanently.

The youth of the region are becoming more interested in their traditions, but becoming an artisan must become a more lucrative career in order to attract the next generation of barnizadors. At Lost Canyon Imports, our main goal is to preserve the world’s great craft traditions by giving artisans a place to sell their crafts and by sharing with the world the stories and traditions behind the crafts. You can help support the tradition of mopa mopa craftsmanship by sharing this amazing tradition with others and by browsing our mopa mopa collection.

Mopa mopa is a storied craft with over a thousand years of tradition in Southern Colombia. For all those years, artisans have been perfecting the craft, with a few masters still preserving the tradition. You can find more information on mopa mopa / Barniz de Pasto and see Gilberto Granja’s workshop in our short documentary about the craft: The Dying Art of Barniz, and explore other craft traditions of Southern Colombia: from the traditional masks of the Sibundoy valley to tamo makers who also call Pasto home. If you would like to pick up some of these incredible pieces, we have works by master craftsman Gilberto, his son Oscar, and others available in our Shop. Your purchases help keep mopa mopa, and other craft traditions, alive for generations to come.