Day Three

Above is the first stop of the day, at a lapidary shop. We saw all of the equipment for cutting slabs of local rocks (zebra agate, serpentine, birds eye rhyolite, peach calcite and others) and for finishing those slabs into cabochons for jewelry.

After browsing the store we left for Mata Ortiz. We got a special stop with Spencer MacCallum and he boarded the bus for a few comments. Spencer discovered Juan Quezada and the town of Mata Ortiz in the late 1970's. Juan had rediscovered techniques to create pottery in the Mimbres style and with Spencer introducing him to the world, has changed the small town of Mata Ortiz, bringing much needed work and income to this part of the world. We stopped at Spencer's home in Casas Grandes, which is also a small bed and breakfast where you can stay and study ceramics, and then proceeded to the town of Mata Ortiz.

We actually got to meet the daughter of Juan, Mireya. She demonstrated how the pots are formed, polished, painted, and fired. The next three photos are of one of her pots that was fired for only about 40 minutes using cottonwood bark and some sort of petroleum product to light the bark.

The pot on the cement is ready for firing, about to be covered with a saggar.
The cottonwood bark in flames.
The finished pot, still too hot to touch. The pot below is my one purchase of the trip, and they are shipping it home for me. It is approximately 8 inches high and decorated by Mireya.


After the pottery demonstration, we went to a small Mormon settlement where one of the two Mormon temples in Chihuahua is located. They grow lots of pecans, apples and peaches in the valley.

Then it was on to Hacienda de San Diego for lunch and a tour. The hacienda was built in the 1800's and is now being restored. There were bullet holes in the courtyard and lots of the roof was missing.

Most of us went to a local restaurant for dinner and entertainment. The musicians brought some percussion instruments and handed them out to the audience - us. It was a nice dinner and a chance to mingle with the non-Mudder contingency. It's 10pm and time for bed. Tomorrow we are off to the large city of Chihuahua.