Hummingbirds, wax palms and palenqueras: the stories behind our three artworks

We could have put a map of Colombia on a mug. Instead we drew three things that Colombians recognise instantly and that most people outside the country have never been told about. They now live on our travel mugs, enamel mugs, water bottles, totes, notebooks and 30 × 40 cm prints.

Colibrí — the hummingbirds

Colombia is home to more hummingbird species than any other country on earth: around 165, from the sword-billed hummingbird whose beak is longer than its body to the tiny woodstars of the Andes. In Colombian houses a hummingbird at the window is read as a sign that the garden is doing well. The Colibrí pattern scatters our brand's own hummingbird — the one in the COLOMÍA mark — in rose, gold and jungle green across deep plum, with heliconia leaves between the birds. On the Colibrí Art Print there are forty-eight of them in six colours on ivory.

Cocora — the wax palms

The Cocora Valley sits above Salento in Quindío, in the heart of the coffee axis. Its slopes are planted with Ceroxylon quindiuense, the Quindío wax palm: Colombia's national tree and the tallest palm in the world, reaching sixty metres with a slender grey trunk and a small crown that disappears into the morning mist. The Cocora artwork is eleven of those palms in jungle green and plum on ivory, with the sun low behind them — the view from the trail on a cold morning with a tinto in your hand.

Palenquera — the colours of Cartagena

The women in bright layered dresses who sell fruit from bowls balanced on their heads in Cartagena's old town are palenqueras. They come from San Basilio de Palenque, a village an hour inland founded by people who escaped slavery in the early seventeenth century and defended their freedom until the Spanish crown recognised it in 1713 — the first free town in the Americas. Palenque keeps its own language and music, and UNESCO lists its cultural space as intangible heritage. The Palenquera artwork is eighteen stripes in the colours of those dresses and fruit bowls, with a row of fruit-bowl dots beneath.

How the pieces are made

Everything is printed to order by our production partner in the UK and shipped within days — nothing sits in a warehouse, and nothing is made that nobody has ordered. The drinkware is sublimation-printed stainless steel, enamel-coated steel or glazed ceramic; the totes are certified organic cotton; the prints are on thick archival matte paper. Each piece names its artwork on the product page, and the three can be mixed: a Cocora travel mug for the commute, a Colibrí notebook for the desk, a Palenquera print for the kitchen wall.

Three patterns, three places. If a design on a cup can make someone look up where the Cocora Valley is, it has done its job.