Vamos a Mexico!

I've always loved Mexican pottery. It has a super rustic attitude to it, which instantly makes me imagine the well-worn hands that created it. The colors and decorations also evoke a casual exuberance that brings to mind home-made corn tortillas, guacamole, fresh chunky salsa, and ice cold beers. Yummm... sounds like heaven. The ceramics that I love from Italy and Spain, on the other hand, tend to be more formal -- There is a sense of precision and formality in their style that is missing from Mexican pottery.

In spite of their differences, I've always thought the ceramic traditions of these countries compliment each other really well. It makes sense, given they share the same origins. In ninth-century Mesopotamia (now Iraq and Iran) artists found that a tiny amount of tin mixed with transparent lead glaze, created a creamy white luster perfect for painting brilliantly colored and delicate designs. These tin-glazed ceramics were passed from Arabs and Moors to Italians and Spanish, who called it Majolica, because they thought it came from the Spanish island of Mallorca (see below for more on the history of Majolica). Then in the early 16th century, Roman Catholic priests imported the ceramics from Talavera de la Reina (in Spain) to their colonies in Mexico. The Mexican culture adopted the art and added their own flavor to it -- making Talavera pottery one of Mexico's best-known exports.

When I lived in Spain I visited Talavera de la Reina. It's a small, dusty town, about an hour outside Madrid that you'd really only go to if you were hunting down Spanish ceramics. This was at the very beginning of my quest to import Spanish ceramics and I was determined. I found a very nice family that had been making pottery forever. They were really excited about the prospect of working with me and were open to my ideas of combining a few of their patterns and painting things slightly differently. When I came back to the states everything was in place for us to begin doing business together. Only problem was, they never sent the goods. I guess it was just foreshadowing of the challenges I'm now facing working with European artists. Regardless, I've often thought about getting in touch with that family again... maybe next time I'm in Madrid I'll make another visit.

Anyway, back to Mexican pottery -- I've decided to include it in my mix of offerings, given that it has the same DNA as my favorite pottery from Spain and Italy... plus, it's a lot closer and cheaper (both to buy and to ship to California). I'm now planning a trip down to Mexico -- probably at the end of November. I plan to fly to Mexico City and then go to San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, Santa Rosa, and Puebla. Apparently Puebla is where Talavera is really made. Getting "talavera" from outside Puebla is supposedly like getting "champagne" outside of the Champagne region of France. However, the less authentic talavera that's made in Guanajuato, Dolores Hidalgo, and Santa Rosa is just as beautiful (kind of like prosecco, cava and other bubbly treats can be just as lovely as the real deal).

San Miguel de Allende, where I plan to spend a few days, doesn't have ceramic factories, but they're known for their art, shopping, and margaritas -- all of which seem like essential elements if I want to realize the full flavor of Mexican pottery.