Talavera Factory

Puebla is famous for its Talavera pottery, which it has been producing since the 1500's.  Authentic Talavera pottery still uses the methods that have been used for several hundred years.  It is very nice and rather expensive.  The Mexico City temple had Talavera bowls and vases throughout it, and you see it all over Puebla.  On one of our trips downtown, we visited a Talavera factory.

This guy only makes plates.  Each person speacializes in something.

Here are some of his plates drying.

Shelves and shelves of plates.

This guy makes vases and cups and bowls and such.  The next few pictures show the process.  The pottery wheels that they have are turned with their feet, even though electrical wheels are now available, because they are trying to maintain the tradition.

Cups and pots and such.

The pottery that is ready to be fired goes on this cart with wheels.

Then it is wheeled into this oven.

And they close the door.  They used to use wood ovens, but the temperatures get so hot, that it is a fire hazard, so that is one of the few things that has changed over the years.

This contraptions that mixes the clay is no longer in use.  It is here to show how they used to mix it.

It has rocks in it and was turned by a donkey.

Our guide shows us this room full of pottery.

When the pottery is dry and ready to be painted, it is first covered in a coat of white paint.  You can see the rock in this picture that they are grinding to make the powder for the paint.

There are only five colors used on Talavera pottery: blue, orange, yellow, green, and black.  Some of the colors change when they are fired.

The entire process from the raw clay to the finished product takes about 60 days.

After leaving the Talavera factory we went by an art museum, and happened upon a cool exhibit of the works of Octavio Ocampo.  We couldn't use our cameras inside the exhibit, but you can get a feel for his work from this poster.  You can see that the large picture is a woman playing the flute, but as you look closer, you notice the the flute is buildings, and her hair is birds, and there are people on her face, and a goat is her arm.  All of his work was so amazing.  We all loved trying to see how many different images we could see in each of his paintings.  One of his pictures had a mirror below it, and when you looked at it right side up, it was two people smiling and looking into each others eyes, but when you looked in the mirror at the people upside down, it showed two people frowning and looking away from one another.  Our kids really loved the exhibit -- Ocampo's work is a great way to get kids interested in art.  We were amazed at his ability to create so many images in one piece of art.