You may not have ever thought about it this way, but Mexican street-stall fare like tacos and quesadillas, sopes and gorditas (filled corn masa cakes with a variety of toppings and fillings) are a type of folk art. And that’s one of the things I love about Mexico: art is all around you, not just in galleries and museums.
Another example of everyday art is the hand-thrown, hand-painted Talavera pottery that’s so famous in the city of Puebla. A talavera plate, for instance, is as beautiful as it is functional, and it fuses so many aspects of Mexican culture. To make that plate, artisans have taken simple, available ingredients and transformed them in a unique way into something that everyone can enjoy. Just like the cooks.
Now, the city of Puebla has a rather unique history. It was originally settled as purely Spanish colony in the New World, rather than a city built on what had been an indigenous settlement. And a lot of people who came to Puebla from Spain were potters … from the town of Talavera. Well, by the end of the Sixteenth Century, Puebla had become renown for its pottery—which, of course, they called Talavera after the original settlers. It’s the longest continuous production of pottery in the Americas.
talavera potteryMost people call this style of pottery majolica or white-glazed or tin-glazed pottery because of the glazing style. Certain minerals are fused to the light-colored glaze, providing the opportunity for the colorful flights of fancy so associated with this pottery.
At Uriarte, the oldest of the Talavera factories in Puebla, the first stop on a facilities tour the bank of big marble tahonas—like a massive “mortars” used to crush the minerals for the glazing colors. Everytime I’ve been there, one of the tahonas is crushing oxide of cobalt with silica and water to make that definitive cobalt blue used in almost every piece of Talavera pottery. It’s a noisy place—belts powering drive shafts turning wheels that drag rock “pestles” around these mortars. Before electricity, quieter (but likely more odoriferous) horses drug the rocks around.
Almost all of the pieces—from pitchers to platters—are hand-thrown. The uniqueness of each piece—the irregularities and imperfections—give the pottery it’s sense of vitality and, at time, an almost accidental beauty. Like the street-food, the uniqueness of each creation is what’s celebrated.
Once pieces have been bisque-fired, they go to be painted. That’s where the culture hits the plate, so to speak. First, designs are created on a piece of tracing paper that’s then perforated and laid on the piece to be painted. A pouch of pulverized charcoal is dabbed over the paper, releasing its black powder to settle through the perforations. The paper’s lifted off, and the painting begins.
In most designs you’ll see a fusing of at least three different cultures—that’s what the Spaniards here wove together. For example, an intricately patterned plate may contain Asian looking light-blue scales and birds—reminding us that Christopher Colujmbus was on his way to Asia when he landed in the New World. During Columbus’s day, Europeans were enamored with practically anything Asian.
The wonderfully symmetrical designs on a piece of Talavera show an Arabic influence. They’re a reminder that when the Spaniards arrived in Mexico, they had just thrown off the shackles of seven full centuries of Arab domination … during which they’d well internalized an Arab aesthetic.
And the bright colors and stylized flowers exhibit an influence from Italian pottery that was popular at the time Puebla was founded. In Puebla, all these influences are filtered through Mexican emotion and Mexican love for life. You can see that even more in the free-form flourishes that are used to border many plates.
A Talavera platter loaded with classic Pueblan soft tacos of smoky shredded pork tinga with avocado and fresh cheese—now that’s a meal to satisfy on many levels. RB
