Laura Aviva Works With Colombian Weavers for Werregue Lighting Collection

Eight years ago, creative director Laura Aviva noticed the baskets in a friend’s home in Colombia. “Their heft, circular weave, and silky, shiny fiber made them unlike any I’d ever seen,” she remembers. The water-tight baskets were woven by the Wounaan, an indigenous group from the country’s Pacific Coast, and made of werregue, a native palm fiber. Aviva set out to work with the Wounaan on a lighting collection for her New York design studio. The result is Werregue, 22 one-of-a-kind black-and-white pendants with fiber shades made by hand in Colombia. Fitted with brass hardware, each piece takes over a month to create and incorporates traditional designs. “The bold, graphic patterning provides a mirror into the world of the weaver,” Aviva says.