MATA ORTIZ POTTERY

Mata Ortiz is a small rural village south of Nuevo Casas Grandes and old Casas Grandes in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico. The original name of the village was Pearson, named for its founder, Dr. Frederick Stark Pearson. Originally it was a camp at the end of the railroad line. Chinese workers constructed the railroad leaving some families with Chinese ancestry. He sold or abandoned his investments when Pancho Villa ravaged the area. Pearson died when the Lusitania was torpedoed in 1917.

The name of the village was changed to Mata Ortiz in 1925 when Anglo location names were not politically correct. The village was then named after Juan Mata Ortiz, a local hero, second in command of the Mexican soldiers who defeated the Apaches and killed their chief, Victorio, in the battle of Tres Castillos in 1880. Juan Mata Ortiz was ambushed and killed a year later by the Apaches.

Although the village grew and thrived in its early days, by the early 1960’s the railroad yards there were moved to Casas Grandes depriving Mata Ortiz of its economic base. The raising of some cattle, work in the orchards of the Mormons at nearby Colonial Juarez, or distant labor on the railroads was all that was available. The village decayed and became impoverished.

ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY MATA ORTIZ POTTERY

The pre-Columbian culture of Casas Grandes spread throughout what is now the state of Chihuahua was centered in the ancient city of Paquimé. This advanced agricultural and mercantile culture reached its zenith about 1200, but within a couple of hundred years Paquimé was destroyed. One of the many accomplishments of this culture was the creation of beautiful polychrome ceramics with painted designs reflecting much of the culture’s mythology.

When Juan Quezada was a 12-year old boy in the poor village of Mata Ortiz, he left school to help his family by gathering wood and other forest products in the nearby mountains. As he wandered across the plains, he found shards of ancient pottery from the Mimbres and Casas Grandes cultures. Three years later he began his quest to make pottery the way it had been done by those peoples. He was driven to 15 years of experimentation, trial and error, to succeed. At the end of that time he had recreated the whole pottery making process from mining, treating and forming the clay to decorating and firing the pots.

In 1976, Spencer MacCallum, a social anthropologist, found three intriguing, unsigned pots in Bob's Swap Shop in Deming, New Mexico. He searched for and found their maker, Juan Quezada. For the eight years Spencer devoted all of his finances and time to sponsoring Juan, his work, and that of his family members.

Juan taught what he had learned to his brothers and sisters. In time, other family members and friends learned how to produce the pottery and made their own artistic contributions. Once again Mata Ortiz is thriving. It is not the easiest drive from the U.S. border even these days but Traders, collectors, and students from the U.S. and many foreign countries are drawn to witness the making of these exquisite ceramics.

HOW THE POTTERY IS MADE

The potters dig and process the clay and the minerals from which they make the paints. All pots are made by the coil method without the aid of a potter’s wheel. A variety of different color clays are used and sometimes mixed for a marbleized effect. The lightness of the pots can be attributed to the use of only a single coil and the scraping with a hacksaw blade to smooth the pots as they are being formed. The formed pots are sanded smooth and finely polished (no glaze) the designs are freehand painted (generally with fine brushes made from their children’s hair) or etched (scraffito). Typically they are fired outdoors (generally not in a kiln) under mounds of cow chips or cottonwood. Various methods are used to make black on black or polychrome on black pots.