Rachel and Eric on mon 29 sep 97
Heading south from Oaxaca city on highway 175, past the last stoplight,
two Pemex gas stations, a few slapboard speakeasies, bumping over the four
speed bumps that slow cars passing through Trujano's Ghost and two more
slowing traffic through Santa Maria (don't want to hit any errant donkeys),
then a straight stretch bordered by corn fields and suddenly you are in San
Bartolo Coyotepec. Translated that's Saint Bart Coyoteville. If you are
familiar with any Oaxacan pottery, it is probably the black pottery that is
made in this village.
If you are not, it's a good place to start as there is some beautiful work
being done here. The pottery is burnished so smooth that you can see your
reflection in it. The potters use a wide variety of tools to burnish with.
Many use quartz or marble stones that have been passed down through the
generations, or specially made clay sticks of different textures that are
used like grades of sand paper for smoothing. I've even seen them using the
hard carbon core rod of large batteries. The pots are burnished when leather
hard, a slow and patient process. They often use oil (3 in 1, vegetable)
rubbed onto the pot to help with the process. Some potters also rub graphite
into the clay to enhance the blackness. I've heard this doesn't actually
help though.
Th firing is the magic. The pots are fired in cylindrical, wood-fired kilns
sunken into the earth so that the top is at ground level. The fire is feed
from the bottom and the pots are separated from the fire chamber by
horizontal adobe or brick braces. The firing lasts some 9-12 hours, building
ever so slowly. The blackness is achieved by smothering the hot fire(not, as
some Oaxacans will tell you, because there is uranium in the clay. At least
I don't think that's it). This is done by covering the entire top opening
and fire door with wet clay. And since the kiln is sunken, it is air tight
everywhere else. So the pots are smoked like jerky and come out black and
sooty. A quick wash reveals a beautiful pot, shiny black with subtle plays
of silver and foggy grey patches where it rested against another pot, maybe
even just a touch of smoked red here and there.
Occasionally there are air leaks in the smoky kilns. Coyotepec is not free
of moles and other burrowing varmints. Some of my favorite pots are the ones
that come out of these leaky kilns. The pot will come out jet black with
splotches of grey-white, not unlike a Jersey cow. These pots are a rare
find, the albino pots. There are two reasons for this. The first is that
potters usually check their kilns first. It is a shame to work sixty hours
preparing a load and have it come out with the pots looking like a herd of
dairy cows. The second reason, and this is actually a secret, please don't
let it get beyond the intimate confines of this listserv, the second reason
is black shoe polish. Johnson's is the favorite. What the potters are going
for here, what they have found sells best, is jet black. With the whims of
fire and the follies of heat, it is rare for a pot to come out even jet
black. With Johnson's shoe polish every pot comes out even jet black.
Back in the old days of Coyotepec, in the time of the Zapotec city states,
there was no shoe polish. This was because folks wore leather sandals and
didn't need polish. It wasn't until some 40 years ago, when tourism first
started trickling out to this village that this secret technique was
incorporated. Before that no one cared much how shiny the pots were. Because
of the clay body used in these pots which was/is smooth and almost free of
sand, these were the pots of choice for using with liquids. The reason was
that they were non-porous, non-filtering. The shapes the potters made
evolved to this calling with special self tipping/self righting jugs made
for hauling well water, specially formed pots used in hand irrigating tomato
and chili, washing tortilla corn, distilling mescal, carrying and storing
water, etc. In fact the pottery of Coyotepec could only be used for liquids,
it was the only pottery in southern Mexico that you couldn't cook in.
Because of the clay body, it would crack in a cooking fire.
There is a great irony in modern Coyotepec pottery. About the time they
started with the shoe polish someone figured out that if you fired the pots
with less wood they would come out even smoother and shinier and, as such,
sell better to the tourists. They were right, Coyotepec pottery did and
continues to sell excellently to tourists. In a time when other ancient arts
and potteries are withering under the onslaught of manufactured goods, (stay
tuned for our next excursion) Coyotepec is holding its own, even doing well
for itself, with its ancient trade. But none of the old timers in Oaxaca use
the pottery anymore. This is partially because the wells now have electric
pumps to draw the water and there are plastic pails and tin buckets for
carrying it around in, and nobody takes the time to irrigate by hand
anymore. But also, nobody here uses the pottery because, being fired at such
a low temperature, it invariably breaks when filled with water. Such a pot
is of little use for getting water out of a well.
The one exception to this are the mescal distillers. They continue to use
Coyotepec pottery because, according to them, nothing else will do to hold
their fire water. They specially commission their pots with the old time
potters who still know how to really fire a silver-black pot with foggy grey
patches and leave out the shoe polish.
Eric in Oaxaca, strung between two centuries.
Eric Mindling & Rachel Werling
Manos de Oaxaca
AP 1452
Oaxaca, Oax.
CP 68000
M E X I C O
http://www.foothill.net/~mindling/
telefax (951) 3-6776
email: rayeric@antequera.com
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