Traditions

Venezuelan Crafts A tradition of earth and fire Craftsmanship has resisted the influence of  foreign cultures and, in many cases, the maelstrom of industrialization. Although African and Spanish influences have enriched Venezuelan crafts, the superstitions of native  communities have preserved the beauty of tradition. 

Pottery: transformed earth
Although many of the motifs, symbols and esthetics of native craftsmanship have 
disappeared, some communities from the Amazon and Venezuelan Orinoco regions, from where the legend originates, still craft pots for domestic purposes. Pottery combines the action of shaping clay, drying it and firing it to make it hard and change color. 

Pottery is classified : 

Indigenous pottery: Wayuu women produce objects such as pots and casseroles to be used at home, using clay made of white sandstone. These pots are used to drain the grease from the millstone. Mythology is very important to the Wayuu, and is reflected in the images that are painted on locally produced crafts, whose forms and colors represent community beliefs.

Lara's pottery: There are many important pottery-producing regions in Lara, such as 
Siquisique, El Taque and Los Quemados, but the most importantare Yai and Quibor. The first region is famous for its vessels and containers decorated with flowers and white lines, while the second produces replicas of pre-Columbian pottery, typical of the area. Lara's ceramics industry is well known only for its beautifully de-corated pottery, but also for its adobe, bahareque and tapia houses, which are built using pre Colombian techniques. 

Maragarita's pottery: Margarita has a rich history of crafts, specially in El Cercado,
where old native traditions are still kept alive. The most com-mon objects from here 
include múcuras for storing water; atripos to make arepas; plates and casseroles, and figures of the Virgen del Valle.

Falcon's pottery: This is one of the most importantpottery producing states in the country.The most important regions for this kind of pottery are Miraca, which specializes vessels;  and others such as El Pizarral or El Carrizal, where building
materials such as tiles and floor tiles are made.

Textile trade
The job consists of keeping the threads of the warp tense on a loom. Some parallel threads are placed lengthwise, tightened and then woven. Squares, lines and triangles are combined in ham-mocks or in beautiful shoulder bags, tablecloths and bedclothes using both original materials (natural fiber or wool) or modern ones (colored with industrial dyes.)

One of the most representative products of the textile Venezuelan production is the 
hammock. The production of hammocks is one of the most important sources of income for natives and far-mers of the country. Traditional Venezuelan textiles include other beautiful products such as bedspreads and ponchos, which are the main source of income in some regions. Tintorero, in Lara state, where ham-mocks are famous for their great colors is a case in point. In Mucuchíes, on the Andean high-lands (paramos), the famous burreras. In Zulia state traditional products include tablecloths or handkerchiefs known as Maracaibo suns because of the sun-shaped lace edging. 

Basketwork: Woven art
Baskets are made by by weaving hard fibers such as maras, produced with thin strips of cane in Táchira, Margarita and the eas-tern coastline. On Margarita island, artisans use these baskets for fishing. They complete their attire with hats called cogoyos, made with palms, and shoulder bags, or pavas, which are hats for women. In Sucre's other towns and in Western Venezuela, farmers specialize in making all kinds of baskets and decorative pots, made principally from cane or large reeds. 

Carpentry: inventiveness with wood
Wood crafting is also typical of other regions of the country. In Lara state, the town of Quibor is famous for the richness and variety of local raw materials. Red, brown, yellow and white woods are used, and the trees are chopped down according to the lunar cycle.Typical products include polished fruits, tableware, tables, chairs and bookshelves.
Old and new techniques have been combined throughout the country by the artists who keep typical Venezuelan crafts alive. It is these traditions that represent the collective spirit of each region.

Artesanado and craft 

As historical phenomenon the artesanado can be distinguished of the craft, at least in Venezuela. The craft is a manual activity that consists on the elaboration (sometimes also the repair) of useful objects or of spiritual and aesthetic value that you/they contain those  diverse aspects in certain cases. This way considered, the craft has existed in Venezuela  from the before Columbus time until our days. The aboriginal ones that produced their  ceramic, their chinchorros, arches and arrows, canoes or maracas, and that in certain regions they continue making it today, they developed an essentially equivalent handmade  activity to that of Spanish, Creole or brown of the colonial centuries that made shoes, it  forged a horseshoe or it carved saint's image. Also to what continued being made after the  Independence until the impact of the industrialization, first external and then internal, with  coexistence of both, made that in the modern craft the aesthetic thing frequently prevails  on the utilitarian thing. The craft, conceived as a traditional activity whose knowledge are 
transmitted by the practice through the generations, carried out individually or for a small  group (many times relative) that it elaborates especímenes or unique pieces, although then it can repeat the operation and the pattern is duplicated, it has always existed in Venezuela, but with characteristic different, imposed by the big social and technological changes. On the other hand, the artesanado, as estamento or social class, is formed during the colonial period and it declines at the end of the XIX century. 
Before Columbus 
The before Columbus craft: Different to what happened in other areas of the continent (in Mesoamérica, for example) before the arrival of the Europeans, it doesn't seem to have had among the aboriginal ones that inhabited the territory of the current Venezuela a properly this artesanado, although yes craft existed. There were not in the partialities indigenous Venezuelan groups specialized in production of weapons, hammocks, cestería, pottery, rallos, canoes or other utensils, but rather these were manufactured indistinctly by the individuals of the community. That which, of course, it didn't exclude that some stand out for their ability or pleasure, neither neither it eliminated the social process of the learning imparted the children and young of one and another sex. Some Spanish travelers, already very early the encounter between the before Columbus cultures and the European, they point out that the pottery was among the guaiqueríes of Margarita island, an activity carried 
out mainly by women; wrote down this way it, for example, brother Íñigo Abbad to its step for the island in the decade of 1770. A contemporary anthropologist, Mario Obedient Sanoja, when studying the weavers of the valley of Quíbor in a book of this same title, writes (referring to the present time, but extending its look to the past) the following thing: 
«...En many indigenous areas and even peasants, the fabric and the craft in general have been a domestic activity dedicated to the occasional satisfaction of the family necessities, or a complementary individual activity in a way of more subsistence as it could be the agriculture, the breeding and the fishing...» later on the same author, when speaking of the first ones commends settled down in the area of The Tocuyo by the middle of the XVI century, he mentions that the Spaniards used for the looms of that city «...como foundation the technical tradition of the specialized indigenous manpower that already existed in the region from the prehispanic period...»; and he adds: «...El work of to spin and to knit was assigned to the woman...» The mention for this specialist of the specialized indigenous manpower should understand each other without a doubt in the sense that it was competent people that dominated the techniques and procedures of the spun one and of the fabric just as they were practiced in the before Columbus period, more than to dedicated specialists (or 
dedicated, if they were women) to the exclusive realization of a single labor activity; since it doesn't seem to have existed in Venezuela a social division of the work before the arrival of the Europeans. There was, certainly, craft and people that it produced it (that were artisans, but at the same time hunters, fishermen, farmers, manufacturers of housings, etc.), but there were not an artesanado like specific social group. The diverse existent cultures then in the current Venezuelan territory, from the most complex and sedentary until the simplest and trashumantes, they knew how to elaborate the objects and instruments that you/they needed for their material and spiritual life; and when the author's ability and the nature of the object allowed it they incorporated him an aesthetic value. The case was given 
that some ethnoses or partialities reached a bigger master in the elaboration of certain objects and then commercial exchanges were made in exchange form with those taken place by other ethnoses; it seems this way to have happened in the Orinoquia, where the pemones, although they knew how to make rallos, they preferred those of the makiritares and these, in turn, appreciated more the chinchorros pemones that his own. With the unavoidable cultural differences (induced by the hábitat and for the socioeconomic level) 
the aboriginal of the prehispanic Venezuela possessed, they exercised and they transmitted abilities manufacturers that today calls handmade, to cover its necessities and to face the challenges of its existence. 
XVI-XVIII centuries 
The formation of the colonial artesanado: The craft that prevailed in Venezuela from beginnings of the XVI century until ends of the XIX one had its origin in the teachers and Spanish operatives that brought to these lands its techniques, its tools, its models and its labor organization, such as they existed then in the old world. In the craft, like in many other fields, the Spaniards made an effort in implanting the social structures, the forms of life and the work habits that were they own, like a continuation of the Spanish civilization and, in a more general, European way. When they began to settle and to found cities (New Cádiz of Cubagua, Coro , The Tocuyo) the ships coming from Spain brought religious images (in works of painting and sculpture), sacred glasses for the cult, weapons, tools, furniture, gear, plates and pots (ceramic), books, music instruments and all type of objects dedicated to provide the material and spiritual necessities of the new residents. They arrived, also, in those same ships, the first authors, generally transhumantes. The case of teacher Lorenzo, a Spanish stonemason-sculptor is known who, at the beginning of the 
decade of 1530, it carved in Cubagua, with stone of Araya, gargoyles and shields. In 
Coro, toward those years, there were blacksmiths, tailors, cutlers, silversmiths, coopers, stonemasons, ropemakers, among others. All this was it leaves of the transfer from the western culture to the New World, but that that at the beginning seemed a mere extension of Spain in America, little by little left developing and acquiring characteristic own, sometimes quite different from those that governed in the metropolis. Although the import of objects was enough during good part of the XVI century to cover the necessities of the scarce and small nuclei of established residents almost totally in Venezuela, in some cities they left residing teachers carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, bricklayers, goldsmiths, blacksmiths and of other occupations that began to form a local artesanado, of urban character, constituted by Spaniards and its Creole descendants or mestizos. Although some manufactured products continued arriving of the exterior (of Spain and also of Mexico) like 
in the case of the religious images, the vitrales, the musical instruments, the fine china, the weapons, the hats, among other, and equally matters cousins were cared or 
semimanu factured (fabrics, iron), the urban handmade production was covering more and more the demand along the XVII century. In the rural environment, the agents (and then the missionaries) they used the indigenous manpower in handmade activities as the fabric, putting this way the abilities and the before Columbus techniques to the service of the necessities generated by the implanted society. Starting from then, I save in the areas that the European didn't reach to dominate, the aborigine was integrated to ways of different production and other consumption patterns, in a transculturación process that converted some of them and of his descendants, especially the mestizos, in members of the colonial artesanado. The traditional craft of the before Columbus groups continued being not practiced in the places occupied by the European ones and also as marginal activity among the subjected ones; although in this case, it is of supposing, with an adult or smaller 
acculturation degree. During the XVI century, although there were Spanish artisans in diverse populations, the main well-known nuclei were those of Coro , The Tocuyo, Merida and Caracas. The urban shops, at the very simple beginning, they were assisted by a teacher 
that worked alone, or helped by their children (who learned this way the occupation) and rarely for some slave that was responsible for the heaviest tasks; special cases were those of the bricklayers and riverside carpenters or caulkers (manufacturers of ships) that they worked outdoors and they used to have more assistants. Later on, already at the end of the XVII century, some shops reached bigger width and in them they worked, under the direction of the teacher, 1 or 2 officials or operatives and some apprentices, apart from the slaves. But frequently the structure was family: the father was the teacher, his son the official and the grandson apprentice. Although most of the products responded to the pattern of Hispanic use, they incorporated some of American origin, as the shields or padded gears with cotton, the butaque (I agree) and the chinchorro; objects that used to be produced in the rural environment. The same as in all Spanish America, neither in the colonial Venezuela difference was made among a tailor, a goldsmith, a carver, a shoemaker, a painter that all were denominated, indistinctly, «artists» or «artisans», words 
then equivalent. That which didn't impede that some occupations, that of silversmith, for example, was considered of more category that others. While in other regions of the Spanish empire, as Mexico, Peru or Guatemala, the unions of artisans, based on the models of medieval root, settled down early and they reached a notable development from half-filled of the XVI century, in the Venezuelan counties their presence you only begins to manifest at the end of the XVIII one. When not existing such groupings, there neither were not here artisans' ordinances like those of Mexico City that specified the obligations of these toward their clients but that, at the same time, they settled down kind of a monopoly in the exercise of the occupation in favor of the members of each union (chandlers, goldsmiths, hatters, painters, tailors, tanners, blacksmiths, etc.) who made an effort in maintaining intact their privileges and in transmitting them to their descendants. On the other hand, the exercise of the handmade activities doesn't seem to have had in Venezuela 
the character of a closed limit, possibly for the shortage of teachers and operatives and for the relative poverty of the country that didn't attract them a lot. Still toward 1609 the Ecclesiastical Town council of Coro  considered fortunate the arrival to that city of a traveling artisan, Juan Agustín Laughed, to who was commended the making of a monument with the steps of the Passion for the cathedral. The absence of unions and of ordinances in Venezuela during the XVI century made here inoperative the prohibitions or existent limitations in other regions to impede to hinder the access of Indians, mestizos, mulattos, brown and black to the shops, not even as apprentices. In Venezuela such an access took place in relatively early time: in Merida, in 1579, a Spanish carpenter committed to teach him during 2 and a half years his occupation to Marcos, a cagey Indian and I christen of the agent Diluted Juan; in the Caracas 1596 a tailor, by means of contract, accepted as apprentice in his shop to a brown adolescent, the free mulattress's son Violante of Guevara, «single woman»; in 1597 the captain Garci González of Silva concerted in Caracas with a blacksmith that this would teach the occupation to his slave during one year; in Coro, when a Spanish bricklayer or name Creole Francisco Pérez was already very old and I make sick in 1605, the Ecclesiastical Town council commended to a black slave property of the cathedral that was also bricklayer, the construction of some ovens to manufacture lime and bricks, as made it; in the same city, toward 1609, to the painter-decorating Juan Agustín already Laughed he was provided a slave so that helps him. Those Indians, brown free and black or mulatto slaves that incorporated this way to the artesanado like apprentices or I eat assistants they could ascend then to official and in 
some cases, to teachers; if not themselves, their children or grandsons. 

In the Instruction of corregidors of Indians dictated in 1694 in Caracas by the governor and general captain of the county of Venezuela, Francisco of Berrotarán, was ordered the corregidors that to the Indians «...que had carpenters' occupations, blacksmiths, tile makers, petaqueros and other fellow men...», doesn't force them against its will to leave to win wage, that which makes suppose that they exercised freely such occupations. Entered the XVII century and when under the direction of Spanish teachers, canaries and Creoles, they already worked in the shops handmade individuals of other ethnoses in quality of official, apprentices and assistants, the Town council of Caracas adopted measures to regulate the exercise of some 
occupations. The biggest appointment of teachers was among them (or alarifes) of masonry and of carpentry; in 1623 they were designated as such, respectively, Bartolomé of Añasco and Francisco of Medina. In 1650 the Town council prepared that who wants to exercise of shoemaker, tailor and carpenter they should be examined professionally by the judges of its respective occupations in presence of one of the ordinary mayors; the named judges that year they were shoemaker Alfonso Moreno, the tailor Manuel Ravelo and carpenter Manuel Fernández. But these modest and late intents of organizing some handmade activities, without ending up constituting some unions properly, didn't prevent that continues the entrance then to the artesanado of members of the breeds calls «inferior» (especially of the 
brown ones free). This slow process was reinforced by the attitude toward the manual work that, mainly from half-filled of the XVII century, it prevailed between the Spaniards and its Creole descendants in all America. While, toward 1570, the Spanish Crown qualified of «noble, peaceful and industrious people» to the artisans of the metropolis that passed to the New World, one century later was spoken in the Summary of Laws of India of «low occupations and mechanics» when referring to most of the handmade activities. 

This change of mentality favored in Venezuela the incorporation process from the breeds to the exercise of the handmade occupations, because they went filling the hole that Spaniards and white Creoles left gradually, well outside for their prejudices against the manual work or because they preferred other more lucrative activities. The racial and cultural miscegenation that took place in American lands bore the formation of a structure social matter, in the one which the brown ones free they occupied, in the Venezuelan case, a remarkable place, so much for its growing number as because, from half-filled of the XVIII century, its urban 
elites, in Caracas mainly, but also in other populations, they had in the hands a good part of the occupations whose group was the artesanado, that which didn't also exclude the presence in this of Creoles, Spaniards and, mainly, canaries. The artesanado became this way a middle class embryo that already enjoyed a modest one to happen economic, even when socially, its brown members are even depressed for the laws and the customs that discriminated against to who has ancestors of African origin and all the artisans, in general, suffers the consequences of the contempt with which looked at himself to the manual occupations in certain social sectors. Chord with the religiosity prevailing, many artisans of different ethnoses was members of the numerous brotherhoods that existed from the XVI century in the Venezuelan populations, institutions that toasted to its members help and comfort in the cases of illness and death together with its spiritual function. But up to where 
one knows, brotherhoods constituted exclusively by artisans didn't exist, although in some cases, like in the brotherhood of the Dolores from Caracas, for example, they were very numerous. To belong to a brotherhood gave to the artisan, brown or not, a measure of self-esteem and it also enhanced socially it, although it had not been this the main reason from their entrance to her. Of 1753 the first relative ordinance dates at 2 of the most important occupations: the masonry and the carpentry. It was elaborated by the regidor Fernando Lovera Otáñez for order of the Town council of Caracas and of the governor general captain Felipe Ricardos. In her they noticed the schedules, the classes of operatives, their salaries, tools and obligations, as well as it was determined the paper of the teachers or alarifes. But although in 1764 the Town council still insisted in it and it designated commissioners, you didn't end up elaborating the ordinances of the other handmade activities then. The brown artisans used to marry people of their same ethnic-social condition, as they attest it numerous cases in the second half of the XVIII century. The from Caracas Juan Félix Olivares, silversmith, legitimate son of brown free, married at the 
end of the decade of 1750 Paula Isabel Farfán, of a family of tailors, with who had 14 or 15 children. It was Olive groves first «platería contrast and orive» (bigger teacher) of Caracas, named in 1775 by the Town council. One of their children, Antonio, continued exercising the father's occupation when this died in 1787; other 2 children, Juan Manuel and John the Baptist, they were musicians; the first one, performer, composer and maker of musical instruments, got married with Sebastiana Velásquez, it mates of another musician. It was not strange that when a teacher established artisan didn't have children that can happen him in the occupation (or, having them, they lacked vocation or of aptitude), one of his daughters married an official that worked with his father. María of Jesus, the goldsmith's from Caracas daughter Pedro Antonio Ramos, made it in 1777 with the platería official José Frizzy Agustín, guaireño and brown free who was the front of the shop like teacher when dying his father-in-law in 1781. The unions were sometimes carried out among near 
relatives, requesting of the ecclesiastical authorities the due dispensations: such it was the case of the tailor's sister Pablo José Cordero, Josefa Sebastiana Cordero, which got married with silversmith Miguel Antonio Cordero. was frequent that several male siblings exercises different handmade occupations and that their sisters marry a colleague of some of those; it happened this way with the children of Juana Juliana Núñez of Aguiar: one of them, Domingo, was tailor; other, José Antonio, silversmith; other, Ramona, was the mestizo silversmith's wife José Manuel Tablantes. Through the study of a family of brown artisans, that of the Landaeta, the investigating Vicente of Amézaga, offers a wide square of handmade activities exercised by members of this family during the XVIII century and beginnings of the XIX one: painters that constitute the call school of the Landaeta, carvers, 
teachers bigger than masonry, blacksmiths, silversmiths, musicians, carpenters, 
cabinetmakers, tailors, shoemakers. For their family and social connections, as well as the relationships that it provided them in all the estamentos the exercise of their occupations, the Landaeta, Lovera and Olive groves, together with the members of some other family, constituted the elite of the brown artesanado when came closer the end of the colonial period. However, although the numeric prevalence of the authors of that ethnos was remarkable, they didn't lack next to them other artisan-artists of different origin, mainly canaries or descending Creoles of canaries. Among the first ones, the cainetmaker and carver Domingo Gutiérrez, to who historian Carlos F. Duarte has denominated «the teacher of the rococó in Venezuela». Among the seconds, the painter, gilder and sculptor Juan 
Pedro López, from Caracas son of canaries, the most remarkable plastic artist in the century XVIII Venezuelan. The children and artisans' grandsons like these 2 had before yes wider perspectives that the descendants of brown artisans. While John the Baptist Olive groves, goldsmith's Juan Félix Olivares musician son, found difficulties when it tried to be made priest, as much Gutiérrez as López had each one a son clergyman. A son of Gutiérrez continued his profession, that which was not the case of López, but this married to one of his daughters, Ana Petrona, with the lawyer and musician Beautiful Bartolomé; they were Beautiful Andrés' parents. 

Illustration and artesanado: During Carlos' III reign, it was to revalue the concept of the manual work as much in Spain as in America. Among other things, prepared that the artisans could not be prisoners for debts and that their useful of work were exempt of seizure. Some brown ones that enjoyed bigger economic looseness directed applications to the Crown so that they were excused the condition of such and they could also aspire to the title of «Don» by means of a substantial economic contribution after the promulgation for Carlos IV of 2 real identifications of thanks to Taking out in 1795 and 1801. These intents of social ascent of the urban elite of the brown ones, in which several artisans figured, unchained a violent reaction of the Municipal Town council of Caracas. The prejudices against the ethnic roots of those and against the manual work they persisted: in 1804 José Félix Blanco declared that he had always been devoted to «decent and honest ...ocupaciones [...] and never to inferior people's mechanism...» At the same time that, in spite of such prejudices, it was tried to enhance the importance of the manual work, they 
were also made efforts to improve the professional formation and the education in general of the Indian, brown artisans and mestizos. In 1788, the presbítero 

 

Francisco Antonio of Uzcátegui was founded in Public land (Edo. Merida) a«patriotic school of arts and occupations», in her became trained forge, carpentry and masonry to the males and fabric to the girls. In 1790 the former rector of the University of Caracas Juan Agustín de la Torre, at the time that promoted in that city the study of the mathematics in his economic Speech, highlighted that the artisans produced works that admired the same professors, in 
spite of their scarce theoretical knowledge and of counting with «instruments so rough and ordinary». Soon after, in 1794, Simón Rodríguez asked that you educates the children of 
the brown artisans and other children of the less favored classes. In 1799, brother Francisco 
of Andújar, planned a course of physical, natural sciences and mathematics in the capital, although this was not directed especially to the brown ones. In 1805, a group of these, headed by Juan José Landaeta and José María Gallegos, promoted the formation in Caracas of a school of first letters for brown children; didn't open up, because the Town council demanded the teacher of the school to be white and the promoters insisted in one brown. 
The organization of some of the unions of artisans from Caracas received a new impulse at the end of the XVIII century, when the Town council commended the graduated Miguel José Sanz the writing of the municipal ordinances that included those of the unions; but of that edited by that that was approved by the Town council at the beginning of the XIX century, they are not known but fragments. May of 1805, 1 the teacher bigger than masonry Juan Basilio Piñango presented a «instruction» for the exercise of that occupation, much more precise and detailed that the ordinance of 1753. In 1806 to the own Piñango, for 
disposition of the Town council, it formed a list of the teachers, official and existent masonry apprentices then in the city; another point made for its respective occupations the platería teacher José Manuel Tablantes, that of tailoring Antonio Combed José and that of shoe store José Manuel Arteaga. 
XIX century 
The Independence: military and economic crisis: The initiate political-military crisis April 19 1810 prevented him to continue and consolidates, for then, the organization of the unions of artisans. The new authorities had opened the doors in fact from Venezuela to the foreign artisans, to those who also directed a special call July 1 1811. Toward those same days the brown artisan Manuel Toro was able to manufacture in his shop of Petare his first rifle that surrendered to the nascent Republic. In the Constitution of December 21 1811 it was declared that the brown ones were similar to the other citizens; the exercise of the «industry» (concept that included then to the craft and other economic activities) would not have more limitations than those expressed in the own Constitution. But the fight absorbed 
all the energy and during more than one decade the artisans contributed to the warlike effort working for republican or realistic, according to the cases, or they participated actively in the properly this combats as the children of the alarife Juan Basilio Piñango, one of those which, Judas Tadeo, arrived to general of the Republic. During the war, the realists tried to attract toward their decree to the main artisans, and brown artists, and they got it in some case; to flatter them, José Domingo Díaz had made in the Gazette of Caracas 1820 the praise of several of them whose mention for Díaz didn't mean that all were or they had been in favor of the monarchic régime. After the battle of Carabobo (1821), the few Spanish 
artisans or canaries that were in the country retired, with that which the brown Venezuelans affirmed their position in the artesanado. Symbol of this change was the step at the hands of the young Spinal Valentine, toward 1823, of the Spanish Juan Gutiérrez Díaz printing in which had been published until the previous year the Gazette of Caracas. In 1824 the Municipality from Caracas reestablishes the system of the biggest teachers that existed in the preguerra: the holders of the unions of silversmiths are named, shoemakers, tailors, watchmakers, musicians, potters, blacksmiths, painters; that of this last one is Juan Lovera. Officially they are designated with the title of teachers bigger than the mechanical and 
liberal arts, that which already introduces a beginning of formal distinction between the properly this artisans and the artists. The artesanado has to face starting from those years a double competition that comes from the exterior: numerous use objects are cared taken place in England, France or United States, and artisans of those and other countries work in Venezuela aided by the work freedom that guarantees the new régime. The North American cabinetmaker Joseph P. Whiting, for example, settled down in Caracas starting from 1825-1826 and besides caring furniture began to make them here him same; it was, apparently, the introductory of the golden stencil applied on furniture. In 1828 and following years the English Robert Hill, associated with Henry Wallis, had opened up in Caracas a business where manufactured objects were sold: tools, chinas, hardware, hats, furniture; the goods 
arrived from United States or Europe, where already began the production process in series. In 1829, José Rafael Goes bad, minister of Treasury of the Great Colombia, highlighted the precarious situation of the artisans from Venezuela, due to that competition. 
In 1830 Maracaibo J.A'S governor. Gómez, requested the government an increase of the tariff rights for the cared products, alleging for it the crisis that suffered the artesanado in that city. 

I progress and peak of the national artesanado: The Economic Society of Friends of the Country believes in its breast in 1830 a commission of arts and occupations, which proposes the publication of a series of notes to improve the knowledge of the artisans; during the following years, in the memoirs of the Society numerous practical informations appeared on carpentry, painting, platería, tannery and tannery, production of candles, bricks, tiles and pottery and other similar activities, although the part dedicated to the agriculture in the memoirs was considerably bigger. The spirit, at the same time idealistic and practical of the institution, was reflected in the article «mechanical Arts», where after affirming that with the coming of the Republic they had left dispelling the colonial prejudices against the manual work, it was said that the moment had arrived of being consecrated to the advance of the arts and occupations, but giving the primacy to those «…buenos carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, etc., …ingeniosos painters, musicians 
pathetic or sweet poets...» went already differing the artisan's work of that of the artist, although both words continued being applied as much to the musician as to the blacksmith. One of the main obstacles that the author of the article saw for the development of the national craft was the lack of capitals; as solution it proposed «the few regular artisans' that we have ...la association and the protection that is derived of the dispositions legislativas in order to the import and export...» The Venezuelan artesanado had to compete with foreign authors settled down in the capital and other cities who had own resources that allowed them to form the public's pleasure, to improve the quality and to obtain «considerable 
profits». Also, they were introduced, without limitation some, all type of manufactured products of the exterior that you/they paid relatively low customs rights; for this reason they said in the Economic Society, in 1834 that the platería suffered the negative consequences of «...la introduction of the beads and foreign works...» The same thing happened to the furniture; to those cared by Whiting and other they united, starting from 1833, those that made come from Curazao the Dutch cabinetmaker settled down in Caracas Nicolás Daal who (the same as Whiting) it also manufactured them in the country. With the support of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country the artisans achieved in 1836 that the Congress recharged with 10 additional% the rights of import of manufactured products, that which alleviated its situation, but it didn't modify its vulnerable socio-economic position. Successive world crisis (that of 1837-1838 and that of 1842-1845, much 
more severe) they affected to the Venezuelan economy and in a special way to the artisans; some of the foreigners, as Whiting, suffered strong losses and they left. Those of the country faced the 2 crises being organized 

Glossary
Adobe: the wet material is molded to prepare pieces that, once dried in the open
air, are used for making walls. Bahareque: a traditional method of rustic construction using 
plant fibers such as palms or straw mixed with mud.
Bejuco: the name given to different tropical plants whose strong flexible stems are
used to make threads, baskets and furniture.
Chinchorro: a typical indigenous ham-mock woven from elastic thread.
Chiquichique: a palm from wich a strong fiber is extracted for making trhead, brushes and 
brooms.
Hamaca: a hammock that differs from the chinchorro as it is made from tigthly woven ma-
terial.
Mapire: a basket especially designed for storing foodstuffs.
Moriche: a plant whose lea-ves produce a strong and durablefiber, tha raw material for ma-
king hammocks, baskets and ot-her objects.
Tapia: a construction tecnique using mud, with strips of wood to make walls.