OAXACAN CRAFTS:
woodcarving, pottery, basketery, weaving, textiles and embroidery      

Village Artisans in Oaxaca No trip to Oaxaca is complete without some time spent exploring a few of the region’s fascinating villages, and wandering through several of the area’s exotic native markets. Within a 50-kilometer (30 miles) radius of Oaxaca City are dozens of small towns, many of which specialize in a particular art tradition. Often combining ancient and modern techniques, most of the region’s voluminous output comes from families that have spent generations becoming known for a particular item. In the villages surrounding Oaxaca one meets artisans who weave together the richness of tradition and creativity, fantasy and practicality to produce some of the most exciting popular art in Mexico. Come, meet our artisan friends and their families in Oaxaca!

THE WOOD CARVERS We have listed only a few of the almost 100 families in SAN ANTONIO ARRAZOLA (MAP) who are full time woodcarvers. What began with a few families has turned into a booming business almost taking over the economy of these and other towns, and converting hundreds of families from agricultural workers to folk art producers. Visitors can easily find more of them by inquiring in the village. They are usually quite hospitable even if you were not expected.

• Antonio Aragon does good miniature animals: horses, cows, goats, iguanas, zebras, deer. Ramiro Aragon’s work is similar to brother Antonio's but larger size. Dragons, armadillos and iguanas are what he is most known for.

• Mario Castellanos has been making sculptures for only 6 years. Mario produces 400 a year, sells in a dozen U.S. cities, has orders for 18 months ahead and a new house. He specializes in stretched-out tigers and armadillos painted with short, geometric stripes on black.

• Narciso “Chico” Gonzalez Ramirez with his wife Ruby hernandez Pinos specialize in reptiles and dragons with other animals on their backs, fierce crouching tigers, and other real and imagined animals. Ruby is an exceptionally fine painter.

• José Hernandez, his wife Lorenza Jimenez and their sons Heraclio, Flavio and Evaristo produce very good quality animals; medium and large size gazelles, giraffes, tigers, lions, polar bears painted in hot reds, yellows, royal blue, turquoise, pink. They get ixtle tails and manes and body paint simulating a real animal coat, but stylized. Lorenza is a daughter of the original Arrazola carver, Manuel Jiménez. They export and also sell in Oaxaca.

• Manuel Jimenez and his sons Angelico and Isaias live next to the Kindergarten on lower plaza of the town. This carving family is usually credited with the development of this art form from miniature toy-making into the quality product it is today. Manuel’s struggle out of poverty is similar to many. His early pieces were simple familiar animals and people, reminiscent of work by Hispanic artists in New Mexico, and he has maintained that style, still making realistic animals, but also ones twisted around and contorted. His colors are still low-key. He works mostly for export and is well-known abroad. Actually his sons now produce most of the work that bears his name. The grandsons of Manuel Jiménez,nez,Moises and Armando Jimenez make bears, cats, rabbits and other animals in the style of their grandfather's work.

• Francisco Morales Ojeda and his wife Lucia Trinidad Santiago are one of the best-known artisan families in Oaxaca, with and orders 24 months ahead. His children Maximiliano, Maximino and Valentina paint and his son Nicol‡s also carves. Their most popular pieces are cats, rampant lions, foxes, sheep, rabbits, armadillos, and coyotes. His work has evolved into very sleek animals with subtle colors and precise “fine point” decoration. The pieces have a low sheen and a sleek look to them. His brother-in-law, Miguel Santiago, does work that is similar.

• Gerardo Ramirez is one of the finest and most sought-after artists creating mainly large pieces, particularly dragons and iguanas with smaller creatures on their backs, a type often copied by others. He has a subtle, sophisticated color sense, and even his ordinary animals show maturity and sensitivity. This work is beyond folk art. The dragons and crocodiles are very fine. He works mainly for export. Gerardo’s nephew Pedro González Ram’rez and son Germán Ramérez Ruíz paint his figures.

• Miguel Santiago Soriano and his father José (one of the first five carvers in Arrazola) are known for animals, especially lions, with 2 years in orders ahead. Miguel is a close observer of animals, and his little pieces have a tender side to them.

Other wood carving villages in the central valleys are: San Pedro Ixtlahuaca, San Martín Tilcajete, and La Unión Tejalapan.

THE WEAVERS There are so many fine weavers of rugs from TEOTITLAN DEL VALLE (26 kms. or 16 miles east of City of Oaxaca, Hwy. 190 to Tehuantepec, 4 miles north of highway) (MAP) that we are going to give you just highlights of who to visit.

THE BUG IN THE RUG is run by Isaac Vásquez García and his family at Hidalgo 30. Isaac is one of the most accomplished and well-known weavers, an innovator in natural dyes and producer of some of the most varied and intricate designs. CASA MENDOZA at Av. Juárez 59 shows the work of son Arnulfo Mendoza. Other members of the family also do excellent work; the family is considered to be one of the best in the business. Martinez Vasquez family: a major exporter, to Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico, California and New York; specialists in natural dyes.

RHUU-GUECH run by Gaspar Bautista at the entrance to town. Exports to Europe, Denver, Texas, Chicago; uses natural dyes and sells at the Abastos Market

Zaxarias Ruiz Hernandez and Emilis Gonzalez: Emilia is an expert at combining colors by carding different wools together, creating many different shades. They have a large establishent on the west side of the road into town.

SANTA ANA DEL VALLE (34 kms. or 21 miles east of City of Oaxaca, Hwy. 190 to Mitla; 2 miles north of highway) has a community museum informative about weaving, with demonstration looms, etc. (on the main plaza)

THE POTTERS

The market in Atzompa (MAP) was created in 1993 by eighty Atzompa families. Mario Enríquez López is the founder and head of the Unión de Artesanos Alfareros (2-74-83). He and others at the market can direct visitors to the homes of individual potters. Some of the best work shown at the market comes from Guadalupe Espinos and wife Sara Vásquez (Priv. de Buenavista, glazed crosses, vases, wall plaques); Abel Torres García (Morelos 30, glazed cutout vases); Rubén Ton Torres Zárate (large brown and tall striped jars). Manuela Villanueva Vásquez (Juárez cor. Porfirio Díaz), makes miniature animals, birds on heart-shaped boxes, fish, suns and moons.

Luis Blanco Garcia and his wife Maria Rojas Garcia: Their house is on the main street near the Artisans’ Market and has a sign out front. His mother was the famous maker of large women’s figures, Teodora Blanco. Today her son Luis is the one who carries on her way of making pottery most faithfully. Teodora’s women were inspired by the water coolers of San Blas Atempa, Tehuantepec, and archaeological pieces from Monte Albán and other sites in the Oaxaca museums. She often combined human bodies with animal figures emerging from their torsos, a concept related to local beliefs in “nahuals” or spiritual companion animals. Another innovation of Teodora’s were animals musicians, putting wings on pitchers and animal-head spout.

The whole family of son Luis makes pottery, including the five children: Teodoro, Adriana, Sandra, Ramón, and Luisito. Their mother is from Coyotepec and learned to make pottery at a young age in the tradition of that village. The family specializes in natural beige, single-fired angels, candle holders, and “pastillaje” decorated vessels of all sizes. The heavy decoration looks like embroidery in clay and is one of Teodora’s legacies.

Dolores Porras and her husband ALFREDO REGINO RAMIREZ live at Hidalgo 502; (2-77-92) and are two of the most original and prominent artisans. They do several months of demonstrations every summer at Jackalope, a shop in Santa Fe, New Mexico. All 9 living children work with them making white and colored glazed pots with cutout and raised designs or in natural (once-fired) clay. When Dolores began working, only green-glazed pottery and the natural beige clay were produced in the village. She and her husband were the first to use decorative red slip and do mermaids on plates, relief figures of flowers, turtles, iguanas, frogs, the popular lily, and multi-colored glazes. A lot of the work is for export, but they also have a large room of pieces for sale.

Angélicalica Vásquez Cruz’s fans call her the best potter in Atzompa. She is an excellent and very imaginative sculptor of figures with “pastillaje” decoration, enhanced by touches of dark red slip. Her subjects include mermaids and other sea creatures, imposing angels with wings spread and robes covered with small figures to elaborate a theme, perhaps a wedding. Angélicalica also makes a lot of devils, including ones dressed like dandies with wicked glints in their squinty little eyes. Much of her work is sold by special order to regular customers in other countries. She takes orders several months ahead and only for a few pieces at a time, not 15 or 20 as some buyers request. The large pieces take a month to make.

A wonderful older couple Ernesto Vasquez Reyes and his wife Delfina Cruz Diaz (the parents of Angélica Vásquez) worked with Teodora Blanco; he made musical animals and his first large figures in her workshop. He doesn’t work anymore, but his wife continues with her grandson Francisco and his wife Concepción. The Vásquez family makes handsome natural beige jars “tibores” with floral designs in high relief: lilies and sunflowers, and also smaller pieces.

SAN BARTOLO COYOTEPEC (MAP)
Ramona Andres Gomez lives on the east side of main highway. Up in her seventies and almost blind from a less-than-successful cataract operation, Doña Ramona doesn’t work as a potter at the moment, but runs her house, feeds the goats and chickens, and operates a stand in the Coyotepec Artisans’ Market on the plaza. Her production is small bells and jars “cantaritos”, dancers, musical instruments, and whistles in the form of fish, birds, owls, ducks, donkeys, and elephants. Each whistle has a different sound appropriate (or almost) to the creature, and Ramona cheerfully demonstrates them. The saxophones and clarinets play, but they are only meant as toys. She also makes the popular beaded necklaces with little birds, fish and chickens interspersed. Her elongated female figures and other pieces have a long history in this village; the whistles were used in church rituals. She is one of the potters who did not start as a child, for her parents were not artisans. After marrying at 17, having children and needing money she started making pottery.

The principal potter in the Galan family who live at Independencia 14, cor. Progreso is Juan Galán, born in 1941. One of the best in Coyotepec, he still works in the traditional way, building his classic water jugs “cántaros” by hand, scraping them smooth, firing in a kiln in the ground and hand polishing. His son Antonio and three daughters, Elena, Teresa and Ernestina, live and work in the family compound, but each has their own clients. The father has exhibited his work and won state prizes. He remembers that when he was young, 30 to 40 people in Coyotepec were potters; now it is the whole town, and no one cultivates the land, which doesn't get enough rain any longer. He makes or worms “gusanos” of moistened clay which he coils to form the pots.

Jose Lopez Aragon, born in 1964, is a large, strong man who forms pots by kneading big lumps of clay into a solid mass which he punches his fist into, then revolves it, pre-Hispanic-style, on an over-turned plate on the ground. He turns it clockwise with his left hand on the outside, forming the inside with his right. It is strenuous exercise, especially making the larger pots, and requires kneeling on the ground and bending over the whole time; one has to admire the physical endurance of these potters. The piece is then set to dry; the whole procedure takes five minutes. His water jars are the Coyotepec classic style with narrow necks and large lips. The lamps are inverted jars with holes in them, cut out with sharp knives. Vases for holding dried flowers made this way sometimes have very intricate incisions forming almost lace- like patterns. These jars have a historical origin in the “pichancha” jars cut out with deer antlers for draining tortilla dough to arrive at the right consistency. The lip is called a “boca” and put on separately because the weight of the body would squash the pot when drying. López is widely recognized as a major potter; he had a two-man show of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca in 1995 (with María Rojas García, the wife of Luis Blanco in Atzompa.).

The Pedro Family in Coyotepec on the west side of the main highway into town, makes black pottery and sculpture. The most well-known is Carlomagno, born in 1965, who uses skeleton figures to illustrate Zapotec folklore; sister Adelina is best known for her wonderful angels and mermaids; Magdalena creates ladies in regional dress combining highly polished and matte surfaces. Antonio Euripides elaborates religious themes, and the parents make figures of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Benito Ju‡rez and candle holders. Carlomagno has exhibited in Chicago, San Francisco, Saint Louis, as well as France, Germany, and Switzerland. His life-sized skeletons and figures of death are in major collections in the U.S. and Mexico. The work is inspired by old Zapotec legends told by his grandparents, in which fantasy mixes with reality and “nahuals”, which are people transformed into animals, do astounding and sometimes wicked feats. He also does large imaginative wall sculptures that project the magic of his legends.

Valente Nieto Real is the son of deceased Doña Rosa, the lady who made the polished black pottery of her village world-famous. He has faithfully continued her work of making pottery, demonstrating the process, and entertaining countless people. Other potters are happy to do likewise and have their shops along the main street, or you can ask where to go at the artisans’ market.

OCOTLAN de MORELOS (MAP)
The stars of the pottery industry are the four Aguilar sisters: Guillermina, Irene, Josefina, and Concepción. The sisters and their families all live next to one another, on the right of the main highway before you get into town, their houses are recognizable from the pottery ladies on the wall. The Aguilars learned their trade from mother Isaura Alc‡ntara. Guillermina is the oldest, then Josefina with 3 children in the business, Irene with 3, and Concepción together with her 3 daughters. Each sister has her own specialty within the general subject of village ladies elaborated in various ways. All show in major museums in Mexico and abroad; Irene demonstrates in the U.S. regularly, and they have a large international clientele. Their figures of women with bell-shaped skirts as the base of the sculpture, carry fruit in baskets, flowers, turkeys, animals and the other things one finds in markets, or perhaps the sun, moon and stars! Irene and Guillermina produce ladies of the night, exotic creatures with some key anatomy showing. Josefina and Concepción create astounding scenes of multiple figures as well: weddings, nativities, even whole town plazas with palm trees and a bandstand full of musicians.

About 75% of the Aguilars’ work is sold to Mexicans for resale, the rest to clients from abroad. The markups can be steep; Guillermina saw a piece of hers for sale in Toronto for $500 (Canadian) that she sold for100 Mexican pesos. The Aguilar studio is open to visitors and you can purchase pieces from a room near the entrance, but don’t expect to be entertained by this hard-working family. Sometimes sixty tourists arrive in a day, and not one buys anything.

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