Mata Ortiz Pottery

In the 1970s a young woodcutter named Juan Quezada, living in the village of Juan Mata Ortiz near the ruins of Paquime, began studying the potsherds he found in the desert and teaching himself to reproduce them - digging local clays, building vessels by hand without a wheel, burnishing them with stones, mixing mineral pigments and firing in the open ground. He got there, then did something unusual: he taught everyone who asked, starting with his family and spreading through the village. Today several hundred potters work in Mata Ortiz, and the ware - thin-walled, symmetrical, burnished to a soft sheen and painted in fine geometric patterns of black, red and cream - hangs in museums and sells internationally, while the village itself remains a dusty grid of adobe houses with dogs in the road. Visitors knock at workshops, watch the coiling, burnishing and pit firing, and buy directly from the makers, whose names are marked on the bases and whose reputations differ enormously in price.

What you actually see

• Hand-built vessels - coiled without a wheel, walls astonishingly thin.
• Stone burnishing - the surface polished before painting.
• The fine-line painting - geometric patterns in mineral pigment.
• Open firing - pit and dung firings behind the houses.

When to go

October to April for comfortable desert weather; any weekday finds workshops at work. Combine with the Paquime ruins that inspired the whole revival.

Honest expectations

The village is genuinely rural - dirt roads, few services, cash only. Prices span from modest to serious depending on the maker; ask to see signatures and compare. Shipping is arranged through galleries in Nuevo Casas Grandes.

Nearby

Paquime's UNESCO-listed adobe city is under an hour away; the Sierra Madre and the Mennonite farm country lie south and east.