Gourd carving originally came from the Taíno people native to Puerto Rico, who used the higüeras for maracas, containers, plates, and dippers called jatacas. From them, the tradition was passed on to the Puerto Rican jíbaros, or country people. Gourds were objects of everyday use for the jíbaros up through at least the 1950s, especially in the inland mountain regions where commercially made goods were not readily available. Musical instruments like cuatros were also made from these gourds. Gourds for household use had only simple decorations, like carved borders; but when the efforts of Puerto Rico’s Instituto de Cultura to rescue traditional arts created a market for such objects in the 1960s, artisans began to make ever more elaborate carvings.
