Mata Ortiz Pottery What’s the story behind it? It starts in the tiny village of Mata Ortiz in the northern state of Chihuahua Mexico with a young boy named Jaun Quezada.

                                                                                                  
As it’s told a young boy Twelve-year-old would go out and gathering fire wood with he’s burro. He lived in a small dusty town named Mata Ortiz.. Juan came across some old pottery pieces from some 600 years earlier. A primitive culture called Casas Grandes, had lived in the city of Paquime on these lands then mysteriously disappeared.  Juan was fascinated with them he started collecting the small pottery pieces.  He would exam them over and over again deciding that he wanted to make pottery like the prehistoric cultures.

By trial and error he would eventually find just the right cay mixture from the lands around Mata Ortiz. He learned how to shape the clay and build pots by hand and by using coils and the pinching technique. He also experimented with different materials to make the color pigments he would need to pain his pottery. He made his own brushes using children’s hair. He created his own unique way of firing the pots using cow manure and other pots or cans along with rocks to keep the air flowing. 

Juan Quezada’s pottery from Mata Ortiz was discovered in 1976, by an American anthropologist, Spencer MacCallum, who specialized in art history. While in a junk store in New Mexico he came across some pots and was taken by their beauty, and the pottery design. He started out on a quest to find the artist of these pots and that eventually led him to the dusty village of Mata Ortiz and Juan Quezada’s home.

It was then when Jaun was commissioned to work on his pottery and would be paid.  Juan couldn’t believe that this American man had come all the way to find him. Because of Spencer’s interest and promotion in the southern part of the United States, Juan accomplished more and more everyday as a potter.  First he taught his family, and other members of the Mata Ortiz community to work with ceramics.  Today, there are 400 artists who make up this artistic movement, dedicated to Mata Ortiz pottery.  

This story of Mata Ortiz is unlike most of Mexico’s potter’s because Jaun did not learn his techniques from his ancestors but developed them himself. Now the whole town of Mata Ortiz benefits from learning his techniques and in less than 30 years the potter has gone from imitating pre-Hispanic designs to developing creativity whose expressions surprise us every day.  It is now considered that Mata Ortiz pottery has reached its classic period.