My reco would be to fall by la tienda Arte Mexicano Nopal on Calle 5 de Mayo and talk to (always helpful) Jesús. He’ll probably recommend that you scoot-over three blocks and talk to (always playful) Josefina at Rosimar Artesanías, who’ll probably recommend that you walk over three MORE blocks and talk with (always attentive) Manuel Catalán at his carpentry shop across from the church on Calle Altamirano.

Manuel will probably quote you 300 pesos to custom-make your ornate 36”sq base frame (to your supplied x-pattern and dimensioned drawings) and recommend that he make the frame out of a dense ‘imported’ HARD pine. He’d predictably further recommend that you take his finished ‘base frame’ over to the Michoacán furniture guys across the canal from El Comer, who can then hand-carve a typical Tarascan bas-relief motif into his woodwork for an additional 120 pesos.

Voilà….. $420 pesos complete….. for a ‘perfect solution’ that the Huicholes themselves would certainly approve of in softy ‘isolating’ their welcomingly vibrant, curiously psychedelic, and ever-mystifying symbol-rich thread‘paintings’……

And OH, I’d also recommend that you take the frame home to do your OWN tinta-n-finish waxing, as you are then assured to getting the EXACT color whatcha needz…… (in matching the surrounding furniture)!!

¡VIVA!...... as you then scoot over to El Profe in Coacoyul for Thurday Pozóle = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byZXD-AHg3g

We just acquired some lovely new regional artwork on a ‘round robin’ whirlwind trip (clockin some 1K miles…. again !) and we’d luv to find a shop that may have a nice selection of traditional, carved ‘colonial-esque’ styles of wooden frame stock.

Gracias / AJ