Picture a market square in northeastern Brazil, decades ago. Between the fruit stalls and the spice sellers, thin booklets of poetry hang from strings like laundry — which is exactly how literatura de cordel, "string literature," got its name. The verses inside told of bandits and saints, droughts and miracles. But it was the covers that stopped people mid-step: bold, high-contrast images carved by hand into blocks of wood, inked, and pressed onto paper.
Art with a knife, not a brush
Woodcut — xilogravura in Portuguese — is one of the oldest printing techniques in the world, but cordel artists made it entirely their own. With simple tools and scraps of wood, they carved accordion players and dancing couples, cowboys of the sertão and fantastical beasts. Every line had to be decisive: you can't erase a knife stroke. That constraint created the style's unmistakable power — raw, direct, alive.
Why it looks so modern
Strip away everything unnecessary, keep only bold shapes and honest lines — that's woodcut, and it's also the definition of modern graphic design. It's no accident that designers around the world study xilogravura masters like J. Borges, whose prints hang in museums today after decades of selling for pennies at markets. The style went from string to gallery without changing a thing. The world simply caught up.
The spirit lives on
Our newest folk series pays homage to this tradition — original pieces inspired by the carved lines, the high contrast, and the joyful movement of cordel covers, rendered in our warm palette of cream, black and terracotta. As always, they are love letters, not copies: the tradition belongs to the northeastern artists who built it and still carve it today.
Explore the Folk & Heritage collection — and if this story made your hands itch to create, this month's #FolkArtChallenge is waiting for you. 🪗