The bread art of Ecuador - and butter

UNESCO Courier, July, 1984 by Jorge Enrique Adoum

WHILE the arts of jewellery and pottery, of leatherwork and woodwork, of metal and wool, are practised in virtually all the countries of Latin America, it seems that the figurines made from flour paste, popularly known as "bread figures", are found only in Ecuador, where they are produced in the little town of Calderon some fifteen kilometres north of Quito.

In decorating the figures, which reproduce elements from the environment and daily life, the creative artists of Calderon shun the easy temptation of realism. In a sense they yield to realism when they fashion human figures--Indian men beside grazing sheep, Indian women sitting beside sacks of fruit in an imaginary market. But the animals they model belong to the world of plants as much as to the world of animals: llamas, horses, bulls, parrots, tortoises and even fish (which do not exist in the region) have big flowers, garlands of leaves and petals with edges like silk, instead of skin, hair, feathers, or scales. The colours, which are used indiscriminately, are those found in the dress of the local women: orange, green, scarlet, and the blue--between navy blue and sky blue--which the Indians call "colour of dawn."

The figures are the product of domestic and collective craftsmanship. At any hour of the day girls can be found sitting around rough and ready tables in the inner patios of Calderon houses, deftly moulding figures which are identical except for some tiny detail, which may be the result of skill, error or chance. The figures are then lightly baked in an oven or dried in the equatorial sun before being painted. Maybe they are coloured by the same children, but in some cases the mastery of relief or line displayed in the eyebrows or lips of the tiny faces or in the single eye of a llama seen in profile seem like the work of expert adults. Certainly the paste is prepared by the mother and it is she, along or with her husband, who sells the figures to the public in an increasing number of bigger and bigger shops.

The figures show that fondness for minute detail which is a general characteristic of popular Ecuadorian craftsmanship. Large specimens measuring as much as twenty or thirty centimetres in height are few and are used to decorate walls (their backs being fitted with a piece of wire or string for this purpose). More commonly they measure a mere five or six centimetres, are decorated nonetheless with an extraordinary profusion of detail, and are displayed on shelves or tables. Recently, in response to market demand or in an attempt to expand the market, production has begun of tiny figures of Indians ("Cholas") and llamas fastened to safety pins and sold as women's brooches. In this instance, like that of mirror frames decorated with flower motifs, this art is in a sense utilitarian. However, unlike other forms of craftsmanship the bread figures are works of pure art created with no other end in view than the pleasure to be derived from contemplating, admiring and living among them.

Calderon is little more than two rows of houses, mostly workshops, storehouses and shops where bread figures are sold, on each side of a dusty road. The community lives from tourism. A major draw for the tourists, from Ecuador and other countries, is the proximity of the equator, which is marked at the base of an obelisk (inside which a museum of popular arts is being created) where visitors can be photographed standing with one foot in te northern hemisphere and one foot in the souhern hemisphere. Tourism has also brought a host of posters and signs written in an English full of touching spelling mistakes. It has also brought the pressure of a different kind of demand which has led to the recent appearance among the bread figures of portrayals of Father Christmas and Christmas trees. The Calderon artists have long modelled crehes which are authentic reproductions, touched with innocence and originality (the Virgin may be Indian, one of the Magi may have no beard) of those traditionally produced in some European countries. Until recently it was also possible to find clowns whose clothing was the finest example of the artists' consummate skill in depicting tiny details and of richness of colour.

The bread figures also differ from other forms of traditional craftsmanship whose origins it is difficult to pinpoint in time, in the sense that they can be associated with a specific date and historical period. The date is 1535, when the Flemish priest Fray Jodoco Ricke brought the first ears of corn to Ecuador and taught the people to use wooden plouhgs. The period began when the Calderon community had sufficient bread to be able to use some of its flour to fashion these figurines whose ingenuous beauty is a joy for ever, like that of any authentic work of art, although in this case their lives are usually short. The figurines are extremely fragile and in certain regions, especially on te tropical coast, they fall prey to the appetities of ravaging insects.