Fri/June 15 - 4pm to 8pm
Sat/June 16 - 10am to 6pm
Our good friend, Eidell Wassersman, has been making the trip back and forth to the village of Mata Ortiz for many, many years. She brings back a van load of the exquisite pottery from the over 300 potters that live in this village in northern Mexico.
The people of Mata Ortiz mine their own clay and create mineral paints to make these vessels. Each pot is made by hand without using a wheel. Hard to believe given how perfect most of the pots are! They are then pit fired in the ground.
The method and style of Mata Ortiz pottery hails back to the Paquime people who left ancient ruins near the village of Mata Ortiz. The pottery had not been made in hundreds of years, when in the late 1960s, a young man named Juan Quezada decided if the ancients could make it, so could he. All alone he figured out where the clay and minerals were, and how they were constructed and fired. Thus, some call this pottery "The Miracle of Mata Ortiz".