Amate Paper, from Bark to Sheet
A closer look at the making of amate paper in Puebla’s Sierra Norte.
Every piece of amate paper art begins inside a tree. Beneath the outer skin of the jonote lies a pale, fibrous inner bark. In the Sierra Norte de Puebla, artisans boil that bark and beat it with stone until the loose strands close into a single sheet. "No hay moldes, no hay máquinas": no moulds, no machines. Each sheet has its own texture and its own colour.
That sheet is the ground for everything else, from painting to embroidery inlay to ritual figures cut by hand.
What Is Amate Paper Made From?
The artisans work with several kinds of jonote: colorado, blanco and de mora. Jonote colorado is white when stripped and warms to a reddish tone as it airs, giving a paper of several tones, mostly brown. Jonote de mora, named for the wild blackberries the tree bears, gives a single pale tone, a beige or a cream "como la canela," like cinnamon. Worked thin, it becomes "casi casi como papel de china," almost as fine as tissue paper, supple enough to fold without tearing when figures are cut from it.
Colorado can be had all year; mora only in spring.
Only the inner bark is used; the outer layer is discarded. The trees grow fast and are ready at two to three years. A cut trunk sends up new shoots that are ready again in three or four years, while a stripped tree left standing takes five or six years to regrow its bark.
How Is Amate Paper Made?
The bark is sun-dried so it will not rot in storage, then boiled in a large pot with ash from the hearth. Some workshops add lime, cal, alongside the ash or in its place. The pot must be kept full, or the fibre burns. The boil lasts six to ten hours, depending on the workshop.
As it softens, the bark releases a resin that the artisans call both a natural dye and a natural glue. Then comes the rinse: fibre that still holds ash won't come out right. From there the workshops can bleach it white or dye it, and colour can also come from the land, from clay, charcoal and plants.
Then the strips are laid on a smooth wooden board in a crossed grid, "formando una especie de red," forming a kind of net, so that beating will close the gaps. The artisans beat them with a stone, volcanic or taken from the river, until the fibres spread and fuse, and fold the edges over to strengthen them. Some of the stones are shaped by specialist toolmakers who sell them to the workshops: "Es su fuente de trabajo," it is their livelihood.
Working the Sheet While It Is Wet
While the sheet is still damp, embroidered cloth, woven borders of bark strips and cut-paper figures can be pressed onto it and fuse into it. It all has to happen before the sheet dries. Once it does, pressing figures into the fibre "ya no se puede," can no longer be done.
The workshops also buy embroidery from a neighbouring tradition to set into their sheets, "para que al igual que nosotros ellos igual vendan su producto," so that its makers, like them, can also sell their work.
The sheet then dries in the sun, from one afternoon to two days, and is peeled from the board by a reinforced corner. A complex piece, including making the paper and cutting the figures, can take up to a month and a half.
The finished sheet goes beyond the wall, too: the artisans use it to upholster coffee tables and drawers, sealed with varnish or resin. On the wall, it also carries contemporary cut designs such as our Café Calado collection, laser-cut into Café amate.
On the wall, it also carries contemporary cut designs such as our Café Calado collection, laser-cut into Café amate.
Before any of this was decoration, it was ritual. "Quien ocupaba este papel y quien ocupa todavía el papel amate son los curanderos": the healers used this paper, still use it, and carried the technique. The artisans are plain about their own part in it: "Nosotros ya como artesano ya nada más la estamos convirtiendo como un cuadro decorativo." We artisans are only turning it into a decorative picture. In the limpias, the cleansings of the curanderos, the paper is still used for healing.
The cut figures, recortes, are read by what they hold in their arms: maize, coffee, peanuts, guava. Traditionally, before sowing, the farmer went with the curandero to petition the madre tierra, the earth mother, with an offering and music played for it, and the figures were cut. The artisans name the community's guardian, el águila de dos cabezas, the two-headed eagle, and "la madre tierra y el señor del monte," the earth mother and the lord of the mountain, followed by the spirits. Cutting them is specialist work, and in some papermaking families only a few know how. "Para nosotros tienen significado." For us they carry meaning.
In Mesoamerica, bark paper held codices long before today's workshops; the region is the craft's present-day cradle, not its birthplace. The artisans tell how the Spaniards banned the paper because they believed sorcerers used it, and how the knowledge passed on quietly from generation to generation.
It is still passing on. In the workshops the young speak of being "de la cuarta generación," the fourth generation, after a great-grandfather, a grandfather and a father, and of keeping to the paper even alongside another career, "porque es parte de mí y de mi comunidad." Because it is part of me and of my community.
09The Timeline of a Sheet of Amate
| Stage | What happens | Duration (as the artisans state it) |
|---|
| Growing the jonote | Trees reach harvest size; cut trunks resprout | 2–3 years to first harvest; 3–6 years to regrow, depending on how the tree was cut |
| Stripping | Inner bark pulled free; outer layer discarded | Not stated |
| Sun-drying the bark | Dried for storage, kept away from damp | A few days |
| Boiling | Simmered with ash (sometimes lime); water kept topped up | 6–10 hours, varying by workshop |
| Rinsing and colouring | Ash washed out; optional bleach or dye | The next day |
| Laying and beating | Crossed grid on a board, beaten with stone, edges folded | Not stated |
| Polishing and inlay | Orange peel over the surface; embroidery or recortes fused while wet | Must happen before the sheet dries |
| Sun-drying the sheet | Dried on the board, peeled from a corner | One afternoon to 2 days |
| A complex finished piece | Paper, woven borders and recortes together | Up to 1.5 months |
Source Videos
Three further regional documentaries were consulted; they are recorded in the article's source metadata.