Up into the hills south of the Tlacolula Market town I visited a Coop of women making red pottery vessels in San Marcos Tlapazola. The pieces are all hand built using the coil technique pinching layer upon layer slowly building and shaping. These are the tools used: a board, water, a corn cob for shaping, a piece of gourd for scraping, leather for smoothing and a piece of old basketball to shape bottoms round. The piece is turned by hand. When the pots are leather hard they are burnished with a smooth agate stone to make them shiny and left to dry in the sun.
Traditionally the pots are wood fired in their central courtyard but recently a kiln has been built that is fired with wood.
The women dig the clay in the hills, dry and refine it then reconstitute with water and muscles.
A few shots of the town in the hills: goats grazing, mural about the Coop, the center market place and huge church with orange fence.
The sign on the street in San Marcos Tlapazola marking the entrance to the coop. And the pink walls of the inner courtyard where we sat watching one of the women work. Also an indoor studio with work in progress.
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