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A note on import fees
The price covers the piece and free worldwide DHL Express shipping. It does not cover import duty or import tax in your country — those are payable by you to the carrier before delivery, and they vary by destination.
The good news is that this piece is a work of art. It ships under tariff code 9701.99, works of art, collages and similar decorative plaques executed entirely by hand. Goods under that code enter duty-free in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union and most other markets, and where a work of art qualifies for a reduced tax rate, that code is what gets it. Estimates below are on the $645 item value and are a guide, not a quote.
Destination | Import duty | Import tax | Estimated total
United States | 0% | none collected at import | $0
Canada | 0% | 5% GST, or 13–15% HST by province | $32 – $97
United Kingdom | 0% | 5% reduced-rate import VAT on works of art | about $32
European Union | 0% | 5.5% – 13.5% reduced rate, set by your country | $35 – $87
Australia | 0% | 10% GST | about $65
Rest of world | usually 0% | varies | varies
Where tax is collected, DHL also charges a small advancement fee for paying it on your behalf, typically $12 to $20.
About this piece
This is an original Wixárika yarn painting, called a nierika, by Raúl López Pinedo of the López Pinedo family of Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, Mezquitic, Jalisco. It is made entirely by hand: wool and acrylic yarn and glass seed beads pressed one strand and one bead at a time into a true beeswax ground on a rigid wood panel. It measures 24 x 24 inches (61 x 61 cm), unframed. I acquired it in person, directly from the family, in Guadalajara.
The artists
The López Pinedo family works as part of the Identidad Artesanal Wixárika Colectivo, an indigenous artisan collective originating in the state of Jalisco and drawing members from Nayarit, Durango, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas. The family works together at the bench and the panels go out under the family name, signed Raúl López Pinedo. They still build on beeswax, the ancestral ground, rather than the synthetic resin that most volume workshops moved to years ago. Beeswax stays soft enough to take a strand cleanly and holds it under its own pressure. It is slower, it is more expensive, and it is the reason the surface on this panel sits the way it does. I paid the family their asking price, in full, at their table.
What a nierika is
A nierika is not decoration. The word means something closer to a face, a mirror, or a means of seeing — a votive tablet left at a sacred site so that what is depicted on it can be seen by the gods. The imagery is not invented per panel. It is the iconography of a living religion built on the deer, the maize and the peyote, and every element on this board is a fixed term in that language rather than a decorative choice. Contemporary panels like this one carry that vocabulary into a form made to hang on a wall, but the grammar is unchanged.
What you are looking at
The panel is read from the center outward. At the heart is a large octagonal field worked entirely in glass seed beads on a near-black ground: an eight-point hikuri star in yellow, red, blue and green, ringed by beaded squares and diamonds. That is the peyote itself, the center of the Wixárika world. A white votive candle stands beside it.
Above the center, a broad band of blue and white serpentine forms runs the full width of the panel — the rain, descending. Directly beneath it a second band of red and orange flame-forms answers it: Tatewari, Grandfather Fire. Water above, fire below, the peyote between them.
Around this center sit twelve circular medallions, each a self-contained scene:
Metsa, the moon, a beaded crescent with a face, attended by four beaded stars on deep blue. Tau, the sun, a beaded eight-point star with a face on green, flanked by a seated figure and a white deer. A gray beaded wolf beneath a rainbow arc with a lizard above it. A dark green maize plant in bead on lavender, ringed with small peyote rosettes. A white ceremonial figure beneath a triangular peak crowned with flame. A yellow beaded prayer form on blue between two red-and-orange peyote rosettes. Kauyumari, the deer, in white and blue bead on black, beneath a small radiant sun. A peyote flower in orange and red opening over a brown hill, on yellow. A segmented serpent in black, blue and yellow on a pink diamond field. An eagle in white and pale blue bead beneath four beaded stars. A blue-faced deer head with antlers. A beaded rosette in orange and green.
Between and beneath the medallions the ground is a dense green landscape populated with small deer, lizards and tree forms, cut through by a fan of blue and violet rays rising from the foot of the central panel. The border runs in blocks of color with coral fan-rays along the bottom and sides, closed by a yellow line and a red edge.
The element count here is the point. There is no filler, no repeated motif used to eat space, and no loose seating anywhere on the board — the yarn is packed hard enough that the wax ground is not visible between coils at any point on the surface. The mixed technique, yarn worked against solid beaded fields, roughly doubles the bench time over a yarn-only panel of the same size.
Condition
New, direct from the family. The surface is complete with no lifting, no gaps at the ground and no loss at the edges. The wax is fresh and the color is unfaded. The panel is rigid and flat, unframed, with clean finished edges on all four sides.
A note on the photographs
Some images show the piece against decorative backgrounds. Those are provided so you can judge scale and setting. The backgrounds are not included; you are buying the panel only.
Collector appraisal
Comparable signed Wixárika nierikas of this format and finish are carried by North American folk-art galleries in the $1,299 to $1,450 range, and I have set the retail replacement value for insurance and estate purposes at $1,450. That is what it would cost to replace this panel through a gallery, not what I am asking for it.
Item specifics
Type: Yarn painting (nierika)
Artist: Raúl López Pinedo
Provenance: López Pinedo family, Jalisco — signed Raúl López Pinedo
Region: Santa Catarina Cuexcomatitlán, Mezquitic, Jalisco
Country/Region of Manufacture: Mexico
Culture: Mexican
Art Style: Wixárika (Huichol) yarn painting (nierika)
Technique: Yarn and glass seed beads pressed into beeswax on board, entirely hand-made
Material: Wool yarn, acrylic yarn, glass seed beads, beeswax, wood panel
Dimensions: 24\" x 24\" (61 x 61 cm)
Framed: No, unframed
Signed: Yes
Handmade: Yes
Age: Contemporary
Condition: New
Tariff code: 9701.99
Shipping and import fees
Shipping is free worldwide, DHL Express with tracking. The panel is boxed by Diseños de Cartón in Colonia Americana, the professional packing house I have used for every piece that leaves here, and I hand it over myself.
Import duty and import tax are the buyer\'s responsibility and are paid to DHL before delivery. I declare the full sale value and the correct tariff code, 9701.99, so that the shipment is assessed as a work of art and gets whatever duty-free or reduced-rate treatment your country allows. I will not under-declare a shipment, for any buyer, for any reason.
When the box arrives, open it along the seams. Do not cut down into it.
If the delivery address at checkout is in a different country from the one on your account, please message me before purchasing so I can quote the difference. Redirected international deliveries have cost me around $100 in additional freight on past sales.
Questions
Reach out to me directly and you will always get a real person, never AI. All human service, from beginning to end.
God bless,
Ricardo Ivan Cardenas EMBA
St. Joseph\'s University New York Business School Graduate
