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Hair roller, improvised from plastic pipe (artisanal)
Object/Artifact
A short cylindrical hair roller made by cutting a length of dark gray plastic pipe (PVC-type tubing) to size. It is a plain open-ended tube with cut edges. There is no decoration, perforation, or hardware — it is simply a pipe offcut repurposed as a roller around which hair was wound and set. It is an artisanal, home-made object rather than a manufactured hair-care product.
2025.1.61
In the Arús Caraballo household
Possibly bought in a state-owned “ferretería" or hardware store.
The Cabrera Arús family collection
2025.1
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
MAKER: Home-made/artisanal; no maker. The pipe itself was an industrial product, but the roller was fashioned by hand from a cut length of it. DATE / PERIOD: Not marked; undetermined.
7 cm
3 cm
a smaller (green) one measures 2.5 cms of diameter and 6.7 cm of length
tube
Plastic
MATERIALS: Plastic pipe (dark gray; most likely PVC or a similar rigid plastic tubing). TECHNIQUES: A length of manufactured plastic pipe cut to size by hand to serve as a hair roller; no further working. The wear and abrasion are from use.
Good
Gertrudis Caraballo Gálvez
Havana
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
This is a vivid example of Cuban make-do ingenuity (the resolver / por la izquierda economy of improvisation): a hair roller fashioned from a cut piece of plastic plumbing pipe in place of a manufactured curler, which in periods of scarcity were hard to obtain. The recorded context is itself telling — the raw material was a hardware-store (ferretería) item, i.e., the maker turned a plumbing supply into a personal-grooming tool.