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| Photo: Touring Ensemble |
The Barranco area in Cuenca has an exceptional architectural value because it demonstrates the ability to adapt to the topography that the growth of the city has had; over time, this ingredient has contributed to the city not losing the identity that characterizes it in the use of traditional construction systems that have clay as the main material.
Our guide Claudia, an Austrian living in Cuenca, showed us in this context the Casa Paredes Roldán, a place where the Museum is located in an area that also includes a warehouse and a hat workshop, a cafeteria, an art gallery, and a terrace with a view of the Tomebamba River and the "New City" of Cuenca.
This small museum can be visited in less than an hour (although if you decide to try on all the hat models, the tour will probably take a little longer). Information to be found in the museum includes how the toquilla straw is collected and how the strands are divided, sometimes into a dozen very thin strands. (The thinner the strips, the higher the quality of the hat.)
One room is filled with molds (iron, wood, and marble), which are changed into the desired shapes according to the styles that are to be given to the hats, and in the other there is a recreation of a very old hat maker's shop, where there is straw on the floor, a large mallet, and some old irons that were used to shape the hats.
It is also possible to see other more modern devices that are still used today to shape hats. The heat moulder is one of them, in which the hat that will be made is placed upside down, the large pressure arm is used which, with heat, forces the brim to adapt to the shape of the mould, which gives it its unique edge and crown.
Once the hat is shaped, another worker trims off all the excess strands of straw, leaving a smooth edge around the entire hat.
Workers can produce different types of hats; the "Panama" hat, which is the most common (it is called this because it was the design of the first hats sent to Panama at the time of the construction of the Canal), the Optimo (popular in England), the teardrop (or C-crown), very popular among indigenous women living in the province of Cuenca, the top hat, the Pork Pie, the boater and the Trilby.
The Toquilla Straw Hat Museum is located inside the Rafael Paredes Panama Hat store on Calle Larga 10-41. On the edge of the ravine (shore), next to the Tomebamba River.
Opening hours: Monday to Friday 09:00 to 18:00; Saturday: 09:30 to 16:00; Sunday: 09:30 to 13:00
Value: Free entrance
Tel: 07-2831569
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