Matriz Têxtil Insular has a strong research component. This strand is essential to the project as a whole, which is why the island of Santiago was the first destination to identify people, places and practices that hold knowledge associated with cotton, its transformation and its cycle.
The journey was marked by institutional meetings, including at the Herbarium of the National Institute for Agricultural Research and Development (INIDA) in São Jorge dos Órgãos, where we visited the archive of cotton species from several islands of Cabo Verde. The visit allowed us to observe and record specimens of Gossypium, bringing documentary and botanical research closer to the work carried out in the field.
The interior of the island of Santiago — Tchada Além, Assomada, Calheta, Pilão Cão — led us to people who, in some way, still hold in their memory the gestures and knowledge involved in making the Pano d’Obra. Meeting the keepers of textile knowledge brought living stories from Santinho, Totono, the weavers José and Jorge, and Romana de Pina. Among looms, spindles, dyed threads and plants, experiences emerged related to weaving and natural dyeing, to preparing dye from the plant locally known as tintinha, and reflections on the continuity of the craft and the difficulties of passing it on.
The work on the island ended with records, samples and narratives that shed light on often invisible stages of textile production. Back in the city of Praia, a visit to the Ethnographic Museum gave us access to old objects that echo in the current techniques of the ni collective. Observing the tools used to process and dye cotton also allowed us to draw connections with the processes we have been experimenting with in Madeiral. Still in Praia, the weaver Bêtu shared memories of producing the Pano d’Obra and of learning from master Damásio. His testimony helped us reconstruct a line of transmission between Damásio and a generation of weavers trained up to the 1980s, and to locate the production of some of the last Panos d’Obra in the following decades.