Tamo de Pasto: Southern Colombia’s Traditional Chaff Varnish Technique
What is Tamo de Pasto?
Tamo de Pasto is the art of decorating woodwork with fine threads of straw or chaff. This traditional art form is found in the Nariño region, around the southern city of Pasto. Similar to Barniz de Pasto, Tamo is a decorative art form that involves laying intricate patterns onto traditional woodwork such as boxes, furniture, or sculptures. Tamo artwork uses flattened sheets of straw that the artisan dyes and slices into the exact piece needed, before being laid down piece by piece to form many intricate and mesmerizing patterns. This delicate work takes steady hands and a great deal of patience, as well as knowledge and technique that is passed down and honed over years of practice.
How is Tamo de Pasto made?
The process of making tamo begins with the wheat and barley harvests. Workers look through the leftover straw from the field to find flawless pieces to make into tamo sheets. The straw is first boiled with different dyes to add vibrant colors, then sliced down the side and pressed flat into sheets.
Tamo artisans work closely with traditional woodworkers in the area. The woodworker carves or sculpts the base object based on the tamo artisan’s needs.
To make the patterns, an artisan will slice a thread from the tamo sheet and carefully place it on the wood. For especially intricate pieces, they may only take one small fragment of the straw at a time; adding them together like a mosaic to form the image in their mind. Unlike mosaic, however, these threads can be layered on top of one another; this gives the work added depth and texture. Once the artisan is satisfied with their work, they spray it with a fine lacquer to protect it.
Each finished piece is the work of many people, from the tamo maker, to the woodworker, and finally the artisan who can spend days getting each detail just right. Learning takes years of practice in one of Pasto’s small family workshops and mastery takes a lifetime.
Preserving the art form of Tamo
The last few years have been hard on tamo. Many workshops were forced to close during the pandemic, and artisans struggled to find other employment as worries grew about the future of the craft. More recently, business is starting to look up again. Business is returning and artisans are able to make a living from their passion once more.
Tamo de Pasto is a vibrant tradition unique to southern Colombia that reflects the landscape and history of the region. Buying tamo pieces helps support a whole community of artisans, from the artists who imagine and lay down the designs to the laborers who harvest and dye the straw, to the woodworkers who carve out the boxes and bowls. Each piece has a village behind it and contributes to the preservation of the tradition. We work with traditional artisans to bring in authentic pieces and designs with cultural significance - see more in our shop.
