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INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY — PUBLICATION NO. 1 1 



and drills, as well as the ordinary hand tools. The 

 lack of electrically powered tools is another reason 

 why the chair industry does not prosper as a pure 

 cottage craft. The first operation in making a 

 chair frame is to cut the lumber into pieces of the 

 appropriate sizes for the type of chair being made. 

 There are 14 pieces to each chair: 4 rungs, 4 seat 

 pieces, 4 legs or uprights, and 2 back pieces. The 

 individual pieces are then planed, beveled, and 

 perforated or slotted for fitting. After the chair 

 is assembled it is ready to go to the home of some 

 entulera for the bottom to be woven on. The 

 amount of lumber consumed varies greatly with 

 the sizes. There are six conmionly recognized 

 sizes which are named or numbered according to 

 three systems. These sizes and their heights and 

 the number of board feet employed per dozen are 

 given in table 29. 



Table 29 — Chair sizes 



The chair frames are picked up at the chair 

 factory or warehouse on Monday morning, and 

 all chairs taken out are returned by Saturday 

 evening. By ingenious stacking 1 person can 

 carry from 2 to 5 dozen of the 4 smallest sizes 

 of chairs in 1 load, but it is not uncommon to see 

 a large load spilled all over a street. From 50 to 

 100 women and children entulan the bottoms, the 

 average number working in any week being around 

 68. About 8 percent of the chair weavers are 

 boys, perhaps 40 percent are girls under 18, and 

 the remainder are women. The ages run from 

 7 to 53. The 1940 census showed no individuals 

 with the occupation of chair weaver, since the 

 women and older girls do it in addition to their 

 regular housework. The entrepreneur supplies 

 both chair frames and the tule or chuspata {Cype- 

 rus) which is brought by truck from points along 

 Lake Cuitzeo and also on buri'os from the Tecacho 

 marshes and Lake Cuitzeo. The chief places of 

 origin are Huandacareo, Iramuco, and Chucdn- 

 diro. Two large armfuls {manojos grand es) con- 



stitute a load {carga or bulto), which is delivered 

 to Quiroga for $18 to $20. The number of chairs 

 that can be finished in a day varies greatly with 

 the age, skill, and other duties of the worker, 

 and with the size of the chair. The averages run 

 from about a dozen a week of the largest size to 

 a gross of the smallest, and the average income is 

 about $1 a day. 



Upon return of the chairs to the chair factories, 

 perhaps a third are varnished and decorated by 

 painters in paintshops or talleres de pintura at- 

 tached to the shops. The remainder go to the 

 homes of the painters. In addition to the score 

 or so of painters who decorate bateas, chairs, and 

 anything else to be painted, there are about 24 

 painters who concentrate on chairs. Normally 

 some 30 painters are decorating chairs at any one 

 time. The equipment and materials are about 

 the same as for decorating bateas. The first 

 operation is to apply a coating of glue or sizing 

 (bano de cola), followed by an application of com- 

 mercial varnish, principally of the brand known 

 as "Brillolina." The sizing, varnishing, and dry- 

 ing take from 1 to 2 days. Next there are applied 

 two coatings of already prepared paint (commonly, 

 the brand "Piel Roja") of the desired background 

 color — black, yellow, blue, red, green, etc. Two 

 to four days are required for these two coatings. 

 Finally the decorations are painted on, with the 

 same brushes and pigments used for decorating 

 bateas. The designs are small conventionalized 

 flowers and leaves, applied to the legs, back pieces, 

 and the seat. Often the seat will have but one 

 large flower with stem and leaves. The more 

 common color combinations are blue on red, red 

 on blue, red on green, blue-red-green on yellow, 

 and blue-red-green on black. About six dozen 

 chairs of the most common size (chamaco) can be 

 varnished, painted, and decorated in a week. 

 This provides a net income of about $4 a day, 

 although a few painters earn as much as $10 a day. 



In the period 1943 to 1946 the monthly produc- 

 tion varied from a high of more than 8,000 chairs 

 of all sizes to a low of a little more than 4,000. 

 During a 12-month period in 1944-45 nearly 

 100,000 chairs were exported, but by 1946 the 

 exports had dropped to around 5,000 a month. 

 In 1944 about 87 percent of the chairs were 

 chamaco, 12 percent were costurera, and the other 

 four sizes made up only 1 percent of the produc- 

 tion and export. A change in orders from the 



