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Pasto Varnish or Mopa-Mopa

Varnish Pasto is a resin extracted from the tree MOPA-MOPA, pickers do in the first few weeks of having sprouted the bud, virtually the raw material is skin colored leaf crystal olive that when subjected to heat takes a consistency of a soft dough.

To purify the raw material impurities and ribs of these newborn leaves in a container of boiling water a quantity of the product is immersed, is removed kneaded, and an anvil with a flowerpot beaten to get impurities, this operation repeated several times, then ground in a mill to home is completely purified.

Until the early twentieth century ancestors barnizadores this process is performed chewing among all teachers and officers working in the office.

The chroniclers of the time in the travel diary of Don Miguel de Santi Esteban de Lima to Caracas “1740” described this particular form of purifying the varnish.

Process

The Barniz is manipulated into dough-like balls each of which is repeatedly boiled and beaten by hammer to eliminate impurities. The heat changes the consistency of the Barniz to that of rubber. It can be easily stretched and folded. This process needs 15-20 repetitions to achieve the required purity. When it has cooled and solidified, the Barniz is ground and cooked to soften it before being coloured with different vegetable dyes to achieve the desired colour. Now coloured, it is once again boiled and then stretched out into sheets, ready to score and stick into the surfaces of the wooden sculptures that have already been designed by maestro Eduardo Munoz Lora.

By scoring the Barniz with a knife, traditional patterns of sceneries and indigenous motifs are created celebrating the Pastos culture and history.

Origin

The Barniz (Spanish for varnish) of Pasto is a traditional technique also known by its indigenous name of Mopa-Mopa. The Barniz is a resin processed from material taken from the Mopa-Mopa tree that only grows in the virgin tropical rain forests of Putumayo (Southwest of Colombia). The tree was classified in 1973 with the scientific name of Elaeagia Pasto Ensis Mora, by the distinguished botanist, Luis Eduardo Mora Osejo.

The Barniz de Pasto technique has pre-Hispanic origins and it was used extensively through the colonial period due to its resistance and the impermeablility characteristics of the Barniz, whilst it also had mystical religious significance reflected in the art of these Pre-Colombian times.