Mata Ortiz Pottery
Along the Palanganas River near the ancient ruins of Casas Grandes,
in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, a local self-taught potter named Juan
Quezada founded a native art movement inspired by traditions that
had died out around the time of the Spanish Conquest.
Members of the extinct Casas Grandes ("Big Houses")
culture, so named for their principle town consisting of an adobe
structure that towered six stories over the plains, left a wealth
of pottery fragments. These fragments inspired Juan Quezada, then
a young woodcutter, just as pottery shards had inspired the legendary
Hopi potter, Nampeyo, at the end of the nineteenth century. The result
was similar. Nampeyo revitalized Hopi Pueblo pottery, and Juan's village
of Mata Ortiz nearly a century later is experiencing an artistic explosion.
Unlike the villagers of Mata Ortiz, Nampeyo had
the advantage of being a potter. In Chihuahua, pottery making was
a lost art. The villagers, however, experimented with the same raw
materials available to their predecessors centuries before. With no
input from the outside, by trial and error alone, they taught themselves
and finally mastered the ancient craft.
Their spectacular achievement accomplished only since
the 1970's has been widely publicized, and their product featured
in major world museums, has set new standards of quality for hand-built
pottery. Of the many potters now working in Mata Ortiz, a gifted handful
is carrying quality to heights rarely achieved in the history of art.
These villagers one of a kind signed works of art are
formed and painted by hand using only local clays and mineral colors
and without benefit of potter's wheel, kiln, or commercial tools or
materials. Work kits include smooth pebbles for burnishing, a piece
of hacksaw blade, paintbrushes snipped from children's hair. Each
vessel is individually fired on the ground in a carefully "bee
hive" of dried cow chips.
From such humble beginnings emerge not only extraordinary
art pieces, but new possibilities for contemporary design inspired
by an aesthetic whose roots reach back a thousand years. Born of the
earth, water, fire, these pieces with proper care will give pleasure
for yet another thousand years.
