Visiting A Oaxacan Family Pottery Workshop

This week I visited the Blanco family pottery workshop in Santa María Atzompa, about five miles outside the city of Oaxaca.

Ana, part of the third generation of potters, demonstrated how they make angelitos — little angels — out of black clay. Just as she was beginning to sculpt, Ana’s sister Lucía came in with her two-year-old son and their brother, Jaime.

They showed us brittle chunks of barro — clay — straight from the mines, and the water tanks where they soak and strain them to clean away the stones and twigs. The red clay stays red when it’s cocido — cooked, or fired; the black clay turns beige.

I interpreted their Spanish into English for another visitor, an artist from Colorado who had visited the workshop 12 and 20 years ago. We were in luck that morning: They were just about to unload the kiln, or horno.