Hunting for Equipales in Mexico

Finding an ancient chair design in the modern world

TEXT AND PHOTOS BY TOR FAEGRE

Zacoalco de Torres is a small town, just south of Guadalajara, set on a flat lake plain surrounded by low mountains of scrub forest and agave fields. I came here to find the fabled “Montezuma's chair,” the equipal. As I entered the town a billboard proclaimed “ZACOALCO: Tierra des Equipales” and welcomed me into this “land of the equipales.” In the plaza, under a statue of Torres, the town's namesake, sat an assemblage of equipal chairs and a table sculpted in solid stone with carving so detailed that you could make out the leather stitching on the back. A monument to the town's main industry. Even the town hall had a mural picturing a campesino family making equipales. As I wandered the streets, it seemed that every other business was an equipal workshop. Some were serious manufacturing and export enterprises, boasting glossy brochures and websites, while others were simply the family home and farm where chickens and goats mingled with an array of chair parts. I was told that there were perhaps four hundred workshops and over a thousand artisans producing equipales in this small town.

     As a rustic furnituremaker I always look for craft equivalents when traveling to other lands. In India I learned to make reed stools and chairs, a design with similarities to the equipal. I had seen equipales in many Mexican restaurants and had a couple at home. But I wanted to see how and where they were made. In 2006 I took off for Mexico to see if I could find the source of these chairs. I was told that I would find them being made in the towns to the east of Guadalajara—Tlaquepaque and Tonala.

     When I arrived there, I found bustling centers for the manufacture and export of a wide range of Mexican crafts—pottery, papier-mâché, steel furniture, rugs, hand blown glass. And I found shops selling “meubles rusticos” that included equipales along with heavy colonial-style chairs and tables (1). Behind the shops warehouses were packed with every kind of equipal: chairs, couches, bar stools, tables, and even long counters. On the streets, trucks and containers were being packed for shipment all over the world. However, when I entered the workshops I learned that few of the equipales were actually made locally. The frames were made elsewhere and only upholstered and packaged for export in Tonala and Tlaquepaque. “Go to Zacoalco,” I was told. “It's a couple of hours south of Guadalajara. That's where equipales are made.” The next day I took the bus to Zacoalco.

     The equipal is a Mexican chair made of wood, leather, maguey fiber and cane. It combines these into a unique, comfortable seat. In the U.S., equipales are typically found in Mexican restaurants and are popular in homes of the Southwest. The chair's method of construction, combining the compressive strength of wood, the tensile strength of fibers, and the soft comfort of leather, utilizes best the qualities of each material. It's an entirely different form of construction from that of most other Mexican furniture, which uses mortise and tenon joinery. The word “equipale” is from Nautl, the Aztec language, and the chair is occasionally called “Montezuma's Chair” to try and establish its antiquity. Although ancient in origin, the chair has become popular comparatively recently. It was originally considered too low-class by Mexicans, but in the 1920s and '30s it started to become fashionable in the Pacific seacoast resorts as American tourists requested them. From this followed an export market that continues to thrive. Its popularity was also helped by the Mexican muralists and other artists who highlighted the aesthetic qualities of folk crafts and began to educate the public on the virtues of unpolished native traditions. Frida Kahlo favored equipales in her studio and home, and these chairs, previously considered crude peasant furniture, were elevated to a new status as original native designs, commemorating Mexico's Aztec heritage.

     There's a similar story with American rustic. Though the original rustic boom at the turn of the century was fueled by the wealthy in their Adirondack mountain camps, it was thought of as country furniture, good only for the country cabin. (When I sell my own rustic at art fairs I get comments such as: “We would buy that buckthorn table if we had a cabin in the country.”) The recent revival of rustic has finally brought this furniture into the formal living room. Like the Mexican experience, this change in styles in the U.S. was led by a new interest in folk and outsider art.

     The equipal's structure begins with a lattice of crossed splints. These are lashed top and bottom to bent wood pieces. This basic form makes the chair light but flexible and able to stand up to tough use.The wood splints were traditionally split out, but are now cut out with a bandsaw; less waste this way. There were two sawmills in Zacoalco devoted to turning out blanks for the splints. The blanks are then shaped with a machete and paring knife into pointed slats with notches at either end for lashings (2). The base is a thin (3/8″ × 3″) piece of bent wood shaped to form an “O” or a “D” shape (3). The seat frame is the same shape but of bent willow. The splints are crossed over one another and lashed top and bottom with twine (4). These lashings are cemented with a black adhesive that used to be a plant gum but nowadays may be asphalt or even epoxy.

     The seat has three layers. The first of these is made with a random weaving of maguey fiber looped around the bentwood seat frame. Over this network is placed a plaited seat of flattened cane. On top of these, a piece of soaked leather is stretched and stitched (5) or stapled to the bentwood seat rim. The back is made by lashing willow poles to the seat frame and bending willow pieces over the supports for a continuous arm and backrest. Another piece of leather is stretched around this back and over the arms and stitched or stapled; nowadays, pneumatic staplers are favored in most shops (6). Once dried, the leather stretches firmly over the whole, giving it an inviting and comfortable look, in contrast to the rougher wood splints below. In the higher-priced chairs the seat and back are packed with foam to give the chair an upholstered look and feel.

     The whole chair can be made in two or three days, depending on the style. Many workshops divide the tasks up among various family members. Little expertise is involved for such tasks as shaping the splints or flattening the cane and plaiting them for the bottom (8). The real skill comes in assembling, lashing, and nailing the parts. As I wandered the streets of Zacoalco and looked into the workshops, the workers always invited me in and explained the work. The pace was relaxed and jokes liberally aimed at this gringo from Chicago who seemed so interested in their craft. I came to appreciate how this elaborate construction was done with only the simplest tools, a machete, a knife and a hammer.

     The materials used for an equipal can all be gathered locally. This is still true of the maguey and cane “corizo,” both of which grows plentifully in the areas where equipales are made. The wood for the splints is referred to as “rosewood,” though it's not what we in the U.S. refer to with that name. The tree is a bit like our osage orange. It grows along fence lines, has crooked thorny branches and is hard and tough. Its reddish-orange heartwood bordered by light sapwood make a dramatic pattern at the base of the equipal. Using the rosewood for splints means that even branches and crooked parts can be used. The local rosewood supply has been depleted enough so that suppliers have to range into neighboring states, but I saw plenty growing on the edges of fields south of Guadalajara.

     The leather is usually pigskin but may also be cowhide (7). The equipale makers complained that the price of leather was rising and making it difficult to afford. Yet Mexico has plentiful supplies of pigskin and cowhide and a strong tradition of leatherwork. Every scrap of a hide is used. The smaller pieces may be used for a design that utilizes small leather pads along the back. The remnants can be cut into strips for a woven back design, or thongs to stitch the seat and back.

     The varieties of equipales are endless. There are the usual simple chairs and then couches, bar stools with foot rests, love seats and various sizes of tables and counters. The back and seat may be padded with foam under the leather. The leather is stained or painted a variety of colors or painted with designs (10). Some go for a more rustic look with bent willow backs (9). Or the bent willow goes with padded leather, or there is a lattice of small rosewood splints framing the back. There are even versions in all galvanized steel or black steel bases with padded leather seats. Mexican designers and makers are working hard to accommodate every taste in furniture style.

     Before I began my hunt for equipales I had seen only the kind described above with “rosewood” splints and leather. After more travels in Mexico I began to see not only variations of this design, but also some distinctively different types of equipal. In the State of Michoacan, east of Guadalajara, there's a ladderback version with a cowhide seat (11). These are made of “tepamo,” a soft and easily bendable wood. Then north of Guadalajara I encountered the Huichol shaman's chair (12). This chair is made of bamboo splints with a deerskin seat and branches for the back. The Huichol, being a fairly conservative Indian tribe, have tenaciously held onto their pre-Hispanic past. I hoped that this was proof that the equipal was a pre-Hispanic design. However, a museum scholar told me that it's generally agreed that this design is of Old World origin. So much for my quest for “Montezuma's chair.” My idea that this chair must be an ancient indigenous design ended. Now I was left with the question of how this unique design came to Mexico.

     The Codices, which date from the time of the Conquest, picture priests and royalty sitting on some kind of woven seat with a back rest which is labeled “iqipalli.” But this is not the chair we know now as the equipal. The Huichol's special use of the equipal returns the chair to its original function as a seat reserved for priests and royalty, which was the status of the Aztec iqipalli. The Huichol chair has elaborate filagree on the back and an array of feathers. A small feather-covered chair is called “God's Chair” and is set on the altar. It seems that the Huichols have preserved the sacred meaning of the chair. But how this chair design came to the Huichols and to Mexico remains a mystery.

     Pre-hispanic Mexico was not a culture that used the chair. Ordinary citizens used mats or low stools. Just as in ancient Europe and Asia, the elevated seat was a symbol of high status, religious or political. The chair was always a form of throne. Now, in a more democratic world, we can sit on an equipal and perhaps feel that we too are royalty. Whatever the origin of the equipal, it remains a unique and successful design that endures in the modern world.

Tor Faegre makes furniture and sculpture of twigs, branches and other found materials. He has traveled to Afghanistan, India and Mexico to learn from local artisans and research craft techniques and origins.