Hecho a mano en México
Talavera, barro negro, Zapotec wool rugs, Wixárika beadwork and more, bought from the family workshops that make them. Every piece is tagged with the town it comes from and the technique behind it.
The collection
Pieces marked "Made to order" are started when you buy them. The workshop's lead time is listed on each one.
Where it's made
Most Mexican crafts belong to a single town or region, where the technique has passed through families for generations. These are the places behind this collection.
How we work
Makers set the price
We pay workshops what they ask for each piece and build our margin on top. We don't haggle with artisans.
Real origin, named
Each listing names the town and state and the technique used. Talavera carries the Denominación de Origen certification for Puebla and Tlaxcala.
Packed to travel
Clay and glass are double-boxed. Textiles ship rolled, never folded hard. Every order is insured until it reaches you.
Axolotl!
ah · SHOH · loh · tl / Nahuatl
Mexico's smiling water creature, made by hand in almost every craft we carry: carved in copal, beaded, cast in silver, blown in glass, crocheted, and built giant from papier-mâché.
Atl + Xolotl
The name joins atl, water, with Xolotl, the god who in Mexica legend turned himself into an axolotl to escape being sacrificed.
One home
Wild axolotls live only in the canals of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City, the last of the ancient lakes.
Regrows itself
An axolotl can regrow a lost leg or tail, and even parts of its heart and spinal cord.
On the 50-peso bill
Banco de México put it on the 50-peso note in 2021. In the wild it is critically endangered.
Shop the axolotls
From a keychain for your bag to a 120 cm axolotl for the living room.
Phone cases are printed with original artwork by Mexican illustrators. Everything else in this collection is made by hand.
Toltecatl
tōl · TĒ · katl / Nahuatl / noun
Master artisan. The one who makes beautiful things.
The word
Toltecatl is Nahuatl, the language of the Mexica, for a master artisan. Literally it means "a Toltec," and over time it came to mean anyone who works with great skill: potters, painters, featherworkers, goldsmiths and weavers.
Toltecáyotl
The Mexica looked back on the Toltecs of Tula as the people who invented the arts, and they admired them above all others. They called fine craftsmanship toltecáyotl, "the quality of the Toltecs," and held it up as the highest standard a piece of work could meet.
Why we chose it
Every piece in this shop starts with a person who has spent years mastering a craft their family has practiced for generations. A toltecatl is the one who makes beautiful things. The name belongs to them, and we chose it to honor the makers we buy from.
"One who converses with their own heart." The true toltecatl, they said, works with care and puts their heart into what they make. That is the standard we look for in every workshop.