These extraordinary baskets are made by the Wounaan (pronounced "woo-NAHN") and Emberá Indians of Panama. Utilizing fiber from the chunga palm and nahuala bush, women and girls painstakingly plan out motifs and sew the baskets with needles. A fine basket can take several months to make.

The basket maker begins by shredding and sun-bleaching the palm frond. Dyes are extracted from sources such as jagua fruit (blue-black) , cocobolo wood shavings (black) and pucham leaves (pink). Combining the dyes and using mordants will yield still more colors. Dye stuffs are ground and boiled with the palm shreds until the desired color is obtained.

To begin a basket, the weaver forms a coil of nahuala bush fibers. A palm shred is threaded through a needle, and the weaver begins the exacting process of sewing the palm fiber around the bush fibers. The finer the coil and thread, the higher the thread count per inch and the greater the detail the weaver can achieve. Two different stitches are used. One produces a smooth surface to the basket. The other emphasizes the coil. For more information on these baskets, see http://www.panart.com/bask_info2.htm