Tree of Alebrije
Manufactured in San Felipe Tejalapam, Mexico
Material: Copal wood, paint
Design: Johan Olin / COMPANY 2019
Size (approx.) 250 x 200 x 200 mm

Here's a short story we'd like to share. It takes place in the state of Oaxaca, southern Mexico

For quite some time we've been fans of an old carpenter who creates the most amazing wooden animal figurines. However we have no idea how to get in contact with him, except of a really vague address in an really old book about Mexican crafts.
We ask our hotel in Oaxaca for advise on how to reach this rural destination some 50 km north.
Hotel recommends to take a taxi to a village close to the address and to try asking around oncewe get there. With this no-plan we set of.

We meet our driver and show him the name of the master. Si, si, says he and adds that he knows this man and his brother too. We are pretty sceptical about this whole journey. Our driver starts asking us where we’re from, what we do and why we want to visit this man. With our vocabulary of some twenty words of Spanish we manage to tell something about us and start becoming friendly with Ramiro (this turns out to be his name). Suddenly Ramiro tells it’s his grandfather we are going to meet! Insane. Or loco I guess is more proper word for this unlikely incident.

In the photo above is Martin Santiago Cruz, elder brother of master Quirino and his grandsons Jaime on left and our Ramiro on right.
In front of Martin is his work bench. Martin and Quirino use soft, female Copal wood for their scuptures and the hard, male copal for the work bench. That bench is sixty years old.



Tree of Alebrije / Arbol de Alebrije
Drawing Johan Olin / COMPANY
Martin's granson Jaime introduced us to his father, Martin's son, also Jaime who is a fantastically skilled sculptor. We designed this tree that follows shapes found from nature with the idea of using all parts, including the branches, of the now scarce copal tree.




Johan with three generations of Jaime.
Jaime the Son, Jaime the Baby and Jaime the Papa.