Two Colombian traditions. Werregue from the Chocó, Ticuna from the Amazon.

Colombia is home to over 100 Indigenous communities across some of the most biologically diverse landscapes on earth. Among them, two traditions stand out for collectors of handmade art: Werregue baskets from the Pacific coast's Chocó rainforest and Ticuna ceremonial figures from the Amazon basin. Both are extraordinary. Neither resembles the other.

The Chocó tradition

Werregue baskets are made by the Wounaan people of the Chocó, Colombia's Pacific rainforest coast. The Werregue palm, a slow-growing mangrove species, gives these baskets their name and their material. Each basket is built coil by coil using a thick stitch and bold geometric patterns drawn from pre-Columbian body painting and ceramics.

Colors come entirely from the Chocó's plant life. Achiote seeds produce red-orange, jagua fruit yields deep black, turmeric root gives yellow, and various barks provide earth tones. Roughly 30 to 40 percent of Colombian Werregue baskets also incorporate copper wire, an innovation from weavers displaced to Bogotá who gained access to new materials while maintaining their ancestral technique.

The feel of a Werregue basket is sculptural. Where Panama Wounaan baskets are defined by near-invisible stitching, Colombian Werregue baskets are defined by bold visual impact: large patterns, saturated natural color, and substantial physical weight.

The Amazon tradition

On the other side of Colombia, thousands of kilometers east, the Ticuna people of the Amazonian Trapezium create an entirely different art form. Pucuna dolls, also called Muñecos de la Pelazón, are ceremonial figures carved from balsa wood, dressed in yanchama bark cloth (natural fig tree bark), and painted with Amazon pigments in black, red, white, and yellow.

These figures are connected to the Pelazón, a coming-of-age ceremony celebrating a young woman's transition into adulthood. The figures represent ancestral spirits, totemic animals, and mythological beings. They were made for ceremony, not for decoration.

The materials could not be more different from Werregue. Lightweight balsa instead of dense palm. Pounded bark cloth instead of woven fiber. Painted pigments instead of dyed coils. Both traditions share something fundamental even so: they transform local materials into cultural objects that carry generations of meaning.

The specs at a glance

Two ways to collect Colombia

Both traditions are sourced directly by RFB Woven Art. Werregue from Wounaan communities in the Chocó, Ticuna figures from artisans in the Amazon. Both are purchased at fair prices. Both carry stories that too few US retailers bother to tell.