Works by the Great Master potter, Nicasio Pajarito. This is the polychrome style known as canelo

The Master Potters of Tonala:
Polychrome and Burnish . . .
February 7 - 14, 2009

We open doors for you in this potter's gold mine of a town in the state of Jalisco, Mexico

Tonala, Jalisco; A Potter's Gold Mine!

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, and that, in a nutshell, is what this tour is about.

The recent landmark book on Mexican folk art, Great Masters of Mexican Folk Art, lists some 180 of the most accomplished traditional artisans of Mexico. It is a glorious who’s who list of potters, weavers, feather artisans, metal smiths, etc. from villages throughout the country. Any given village might be represented by one Great Master artisan, and in a few cases a village has produced two, or rarely, three artisans that merit placement in the book. But no other village is as well represented in the book as Tonala, which proudly counts in with SIX Great Master artisans, all of them potters.

For six days we will immerse ourselves into the world of Tonala master potters, visiting their workshops, spending a day with brushes in hand learning the decorating and burnishing methods of master potter Angel Santos Juarez, touring the National Pottery Museum and immersing ourselves in the vast folk art markets.

While eleven different styles of pottery are practiced in Tonala, from majolica to black sgraffito and ornately glazed highfire, perhaps the most spectacular, unique and ancient is the polychrome burnishware. We will visit with master decorators such as Angel Santos Juarez, Nicasio Pajarito Gonzalez and Florentino Jimon Barba, all of whom are featured in the Great Masters book. In their workshops we’ll feast our eyes on their stunning work and see how this pre-Hispanic pottery style adapted itself to Spanish colonial tastes and became highly sought after by the elite of Mexico and Europe in the 16 and 1700’s.

We will also visit workshops of potters who do the meticulous ‘petatillo’ style decoration, see amazing miniature vessels and visit the highfire workshop of Ken Edwards. We will be staying in the neighbouring town of Tlaquepaque, a lovely town of shops, shaded parks, mariachi musicians and THE center for wholesale export of Mexican folk art (so you will be able to ship it home from here!).