Warmipura: recovery of ancestral techniques for dyeing wool and natural fibers in North-West Argentina

Abstract

WarmiPura is the name of a group of women belonging to the Diaguita - Calchaquies indigenouscommunity located in Tafí del Valle (Argentina) producing handcraft tissues made of sheep woolcoloured with natural dyes. The founder, Liliana Pastrana, has been working for the past fifteenyears toward a recovery of traditional textile methods based on the extraction of natural dyes fromwild plants. When the harvest of autochthonous plants becomes too intensive, the availability of raw materialresults insufficient to face the needs and a significant loss of biodiversity may occur. In order toovercome this and other constraints, WarmiPura is evolving in an international venture, with theUniversity of Florence (Italy) and the University of Morón (Argentina) as participants, aiming tofulfil their needs joining academic research and local know-how. The main objective of the projectis to satisfy the demand of raw material for pigments extraction, according with economic andenvironmental sustainability, through the establishment and management of an experimental fieldfor the cultivation of the required plants. In this paper some general aspects on WarmiPura group,the environmental characteristics of WarmiPura area of activity and the pool of utilized plantspecies were investigated, and the main practical approaches of the project supporting WarmiPura it is illustrated.