Potter Profiles

This May 4th-13th, Traditions Mexico reverses our usual approach. Instead of taking American travelers on the road to visit Mexican potters, we’ll be taking Mexican potters on the road to visit Americans. The potters will be giving demonstrations in Portland OR, Seattle WA, and Vancouver BC.

Alberta Sanchez Mateo and Macrina Mateo Martinez .  These two women are aunt and niece and are indigenous Zapotec potters from the pottery trade village of San Marcos Tlapazola in the state of Oaxaca. They carry on a utilitarian pottery tradition that has existed in their village and in their families for at least 1,500 years. San Marcos potters create round cooking pots, large bowls and comal platters for cooking tortillas. These are finished with a red slip and stone burnished before being fired in a surface bonfiring. The methods used to create this pottery are pre-Colombian. However Macrina and Alberta have begun to make changes in the forms of the pottery from San Marcos. Responding to the traditional pottery market essentially evaporating around them, these potters have searched for new designs that would make their pottery saleable again. What they found through trail and error is that if they made their pottery to appeal not to rural Mexicans, but rather to the Mexican middle class, their sales would improve. This is just what they’ve done, at once improving the quality of their pottery and changing the forms to give it more aesthetic appeal. While they were simply trying to improve their household situation, their willingness to innovate (and one must understand that innovation is not in the vocabulary if intensely traditional potters) has spurred a creative revolution in San Marcos Tlapazola and is making all the difference for the potters here, whose pottery would otherwise likely have gone extinct.

The San Marcos potters make their vessels using clay mined near the village mixed with sifted sand from the creek banks. Seated on the floor and using a stone and disk rotation device in conjunction with a corn cob, they bring to life a vessel in a way we’ve never seen before. After slipping with an iron oxide and stone polishing the pots are fired in the ancient Mesoamerican way, in a controlled surface bon-fire.

During the showcase the potters will be offering demonstrations of how they work from forming to burnishing. There will also be video footage of their firing process and village.

Angelica Vazquez Cruz.  Angelica was born and raised in the village of Santa Maria Atzompa in the state of Oaxaca. This is Oaxaca’s largest pottery village with more than 1,000 working potters. Situated on the base of the famous ruined Zapotec city of Monte Alban, the potters of Atzompa have been making pottery since the times of the ancient Zapotec empires at least 1,500 years ago and probably much longer. While most of the pottery made in Atzompa is firmly utilitarian and not at all like the ornate urns and ceremonial pots that were made in the time of Monte Alban, the work of Angelica is ornately decorated. Angelica grew up with her grandmother listening to the old myths and legends of rural Oaxaca. These were rich stories about spirits, totems and other folklore. Angelica soaked these stories in and now many of them come back out through her hands, expressed in clay sculpture. In fact there are many parallels between her work now and the ornate religious work done during the Classic Period of the Ancient Zapotecs. In both cases we see clay pieces made with a large base and covered with smaller, symbolic images that depict a story. Then, as now, these ornate pieces were made because there was a strong market for them. Once it was the priestly class, now, for Angelica, it is a loyal following of collectors and gallery owners. Then as now the clay was mined locally, the vessels made by especially skilled potters. Angelica is an unusual potter in a village of trade potters, for what she makes is expressive and comes from he internal vision, making her more akin to our western view of an artist. Yet she is also very traditional, both in her methods and content. Like her grandmother, Angelica is also an amazing story teller, and to sit and listen to her spin one of her tales while she works on a piece is a gift.      

Angelica works with locally mined clay and her pieces are entirely hand-built. She uses a small piece of leather, a cactus spine and her hands to create her pieces. They are decorated with slips and engobes made from colored clays that she has collected and single, sagger fired in an adobe updraft kiln typical of those used in Atzompa since AD 800.            

Angel Santos Juarez. Angel is from the legendary pottery town of Tonala, Jalisco.
This small town on the edge of Guadalajara is an absolute goldmine of potters and pottery and has been an important pottery center going back 3,000 years. When the Spanish Conquistadors arrived on the scene in 1530 they promptly named Tonala the “Factory of Paganism" as it was then a center of production for the clay idols worshipped in surrounding villages. It still produces clay items worthy of worship, though they have changed a bit since 1530. What one sees in Tonala is a unique combination of pre-Hispanic and Hispanic influences. While lead based glazes predominate in almost every other village where Spanish influence is seen, in Tonala the ancient polychrome burnish finish has remained vital to this day. The polychrome finish is one achieved by painting the surface of a vessel with paints made from a variety of colors of specially processed soils, minerals and in some cases plant materials. The surface is then stone polished and fired. Before the Spanish conquest this was the typical way of decorating pottery in Mesoamerica and South America. For some reason, in Tonala, not only did this technique not disappear, but it flourished, though the iconography became European rather then Mesoamerican. The decorative art reached a high point in the 17th century and much of what is still influenced by this golden era. Angel Santos is one of the finest practitioners of the Tonala style of pottery. Such is his skill that he had been nationally recognized is Mexico as one of the Great Masters of Mexican folkart. Not only is Angel a skilled potter, he is also very knowledgeable about the history and influences seen in the decorative styles in Tonala and has read and studied extensively on the subject. Indeed, one room of his home is a museum of Tonala pottery and its historical roots. Both a potter and a scholar, Angel is uniquely capable of sharing both what he does with clay and the fascinating stories behind the deep history of the work of his village.
Angel creates his vessels in press molds. The real work begins with the decoration where fine brushes are used to create, free-hand, the stylized decorations of old Tonala. Angel uses local slips as well as slips from other regions to get the tones he is looking for and then carefully burnishes his pieces using a special piece of mica.