Katuena Comb – Weaving the World with Threads of Time
More than a tool, this traditional comb from the Katuena people — native to the Lower Xingu region in Pará, Brazil — is a thread of continuity connecting hands, memory, and myth.
With slender wooden teeth and a colorful weave resembling tiny looms, these combs are symbols of care and belonging. In this context, combing hair is not vanity or function — it is ritual, connection, and language. Each woven strand holds a fragment of the world, a visual code that tells time in a spiral — Indigenous time, where the past never dies, it only changes form.
Among many Amazonian peoples, combing is deeply tied to the relationship between body and cosmos. Caring for one’s hair is caring for the spirit. The geometric patterns woven in purples, whites, yellows, and reds evoke dream paths, ancestral journeys, and the invisible pulse of the forest.
Identifying these pieces and tracing their origin was almost a detective's task — because there’s still so much silence surrounding the depths of Brazil. But listening to objects like these is a way of returning their sound, their meaning, their dignity.
These are not “handicrafts.”
They are seeds of a living cosmology.
