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Free Gift
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When you spend $75 or more in our online shop you'll receive this lovely hand-embroidered Purse created by the artisans of Aj Quen in Guatemala - a little thank you for your valued custom! |
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Member of FTAANZ, the Queensland Fair Trade Collective and Craft Center at Chf International
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Jessica Palacio was a medical technician before she began to create handcrafts with Carlos Guerrero, an iron worker, seven years ago.
Jessica and Carlos have created a happy and productive working environment for their staff. In their workshop, 'Oh what a moon', located in Limache, near Valparaiso, they employ ten other people to help create their glass jewellery.
Jessica and Carlos buy the glass, their primary material, from a Chilean glass producer and then cut it according to their desired form. The women in the workshop then paint it with special enamel pigments, following a design drawn by Jessica and her sister Ana Maria.
They can also add in a product, CMC, that reacts with the temperature of the kiln to produce bubbles between the two layers of glass glued together. The kiln, hand-made by Carlos, is heated to 850°C - 900°C. The pieces are left in any of the five kilns in the workshop for between 30 minutes to one hour. Once they have cooled, the glass products are coated with a reinforcing agent and the process is complete!
The couple have been working with Comparte since 2000 and this collaboration has afforded them a certain stability with their orders. They also sell their pieces in local fairs and in Santiago's shopping malls to help cover their costs. They would like to be able to extend their workshop so that they could initiate a more sophisticated line of products incorporating silver, or so that Jessica could begin to create her sculptures.
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Maritza Quintero has been creating her glass pieces for seven years now, in her workshop in the hills of Valparaiso. Before this, she studied for five years at the University of Fine Arts and has subsequently continued to develop her skills on her own.
She works seven days a week and up to twelve hours per day, though her sister helps her when she is particularly busy.
Maritza has been working with Comparte for three years now and her adaptation to a more intensive process and her capacity for impressive production has resulted in a great increase in her sales and has also improved her standard of living. She travels a lot and participates in both local and international artisans' fairs in order to stay abreast of different trends. In fact, 60% of her pieces are sold overseas.
Her production process consists of cutting, cleaning, designing and enamelling the glass. These sheets are placed upon white clay moulds and then fired in an electric oven at 700°C for six hours.
Through this, she is able to create mobiles, candelabras, lamps, incense holders, necklaces, rings and ashtrays. Moreover, she is always seeking new colours to play with, resulting in pieces that are not only delightfully beautiful, but also highly original.
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COMPARTE (Comercializadora de Productos Artesanales Exportables) is a private, not-for-profit organization dedicated to Fair Trade.COMPARTE's mission is to improve the lives and standard of living for owners and employees of economically struggling workshops and artisan groups throughout Chile. In contrast to the companies that market developing world handicrafts by paying the economically struggling artisans unfair prices for their goods, COMPARTE finds viable markets that pay fair prices for its artisan's high-quality handcrafted goods. This provides the workers in COMPARTE's artisan shops with an alternative to exploited labour, allowing them to obtain or maintain a decent standard of living.
COMPARTE also tries to promote the concept of fair trade by creating marketing initiatives that stimulate the knowledge about traditional products and cultural values in the third world while also educating the buyers to the challenges faced by our producers.
An important part of COMPARTE's mission is to promote and export the handicrafts its artisans design and create, as well as working with the artists to improve their business practices and continually develop new products that stay true to their traditions.
The beneficiaries of COMPARTE's work are, in general, micro-enterprises and associations of artisans who are from poor economic sectors. Moreover, despite their ability to produce attractive products and generate fair labor, their relatively small production capacity and minimal use of technology have limited them in some way.
A self-financed organization, COMPARTE currently exports more than 6,000 products from more than 400 workshops to nearly 30 countries. COMPARTE is a fair trade provider, and active member of IFAT (The International Fair Trade Association). COMPARTE exports nearly US$1 million each year in Chilean handicrafts to hundreds of wholesale and retail organizations around the world.
Text and Image courtesy of Comparte
info@comparte.cl
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