page_title: Papel picado
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Papel picado / Origins
caption_attribution_description: English: Interior of the municipal palace of Atlixco, Puebla with papel picado celebrating Independence Day
context_page_description: Papel picado is a decorative craft made by cutting elaborate designs into sheets of tissue paper. Papel picado is considered a Mexican folk art. The designs are commonly cut from as many as 40-50 colored tissue paper stacked together and using a guide or template, a small mallet, and chisels, creating as many as fifty banners at a time. Papel picado can also be made by folding tissue paper and using small, sharp scissors. Common themes include birds, floral designs, and skeletons. Papel picados are commonly displayed for both secular and religious occasions, such as Easter, Christmas, the Day of the Dead, as well as during weddings, quinceañeras, baptisms, and christenings. In Mexico, papel picados are often incorporated into the altars during the Day of the Dead and are hung throughout the streets during holidays. In the streets of Mexico, papel picados are often strung together to create a banner that can either be hung across alleyways or displayed in the home.
context_section_description: Papel picados arose from early Mexico. It was here that the Aztec people first chiseled spirit figures into bark, which later became the art form now known as papel picado. Papel picado is similar to Chinese paper cutting (which originated in China during the sixth century), called 'jianzhi' (剪紙 or "cut paper"). The two paper cutting crafts are not the same, as the Chinese version is cut using scissors or knives, and the Mexican art form is cut using chisels. Moreover, while papel picados are cut with a variety of different patterns, the Chinese paper cuttings often emphasize the use of Chinese characters, which signify the twelve Chinese zodiac animals. Near the middle of the nineteenth century, Mexican people were forced to buy products from hacienda stores, which was where they first encountered tissue paper.
  During the Aztec times, Aztecs used mulberry and fig tree bark to make a rough paper called "Amatl". Nowadays, artisans usually layer 40 to 50 layers of tissue paper and punch intricate designs into them using "fierritos", a type of chisel.
caption: Interior of the municipal palace of Atlixco, Puebla with papel picado celebrating Independence Day.
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