Ana is the first woman in her family to have her own ceramics studio. Before her, only her brothers had ever set up independently.
“Why your own studio, Ana?”
“It’s my freedom”, she tells me, laughing like she’s got away with something.
Atzompa is both near and far from the city of Oaxaca. Just seven kilometres and thirty minutes of traffic and dust separate it from the historic centre. It’s not an isolated village, but it’s not just another neighbourhood either. Ana lives both inside and outside the family tradition. Her life unfolds in that beautiful, fertile borderland.
By the 1980s, Ana’s mother was already opening her studio to visitors, which was unusual at the time. She shared both the technique and the process, and she understood that seeing is where love begins… and so does the sale.
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
It’s no small thing. Pottery studios in Oaxaca are inside people’s homes. Opening them means welcoming strangers into the intimacy of the kitchen, the living room, and the courtyards, with their dogs, their chickens, and their lives.
“I started giving workshops to travellers eighteen years ago, and I never tire of it. I love talking to people.”
You can tell. Her patience is genuine as her students, myself included, spin the wheel awkwardly and end up with nothing more than a lump of clay or a lopsided cup.
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Eight hundred metres from Ana’s workshop lies the archaeological site of Atzompa, once part of Monte Albán’s wider hilltop complex and home to families of the Zapotec elite. From the top of the hill you can see the whole Etla Valley and Monte Albán, a 360-degree view. My favourite place on the site is the benches under the trees, to enjoy the shade and a good coffee.
Atzompa is monumental and sumptuous; it looks designed to make power visible: large private residences and open plazas; the largest ball court in the Monte Albán complex; family tombs, ceremonial spaces, staircases and kilns. The effigy vessels known as Señor Ocho Temblor and Señora Agua were found in one of its tombs. In domestic areas, alongside the elite residences, archaeologists found kilns. Clay and fire had always been close to home, close to everyday life.
“I used to play up there, among the pyramids. I would sneak away from my mum and climb up. But the moment the sun went down, we all ran home. We always thought the place was haunted.”
Ana says that children still find pre-Hispanic figurines while playing football on the village courts.
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Potters and ceramicists such as Teodora Blanco, Adelina Maldonado, and Dolores Porras all came out of Atzompa, from a tradition stretching back more than ten centuries. María Elena López Pacheco, who studied their lives and work in depth, writes that each woman had to carve out a place for herself within the family — both belonging and separating at the same time. Many of us know that feeling.
Since the 1990s, Atzompa has weathered several storms. Health concerns over lead-based glazes affected sales of its traditional green-glazed pottery and prompted a search for lead-free glazes, different kilns and new finishes. Today, it can be found alongside natural clay, reduction-fired ceramics, coloured slips, polychrome finishes, increasingly delicate applied decoration known as pastillaje, and high-fired ceramics. Today, more than four hundred units in the municipality are dedicated to pottery. Pieces travel on Instagram before they travel in a van, though visibility doesn’t always mean sales.
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Ana’s workshop also receives ideas from far away. She has worked with a Japanese artist named Suzuki (his full name escapes her), Pedro Pablo (known as Arch), and with the Cuban artist Llane Alexis. They arrive with a design, Ana works out how to make it in clay, fire it and bring it to life. As each piece takes shape, she becomes part of its creation.
Suzuki once told her that in Japan, a vessel with two long straws attached has been used for centuries by couples during a marriage ritual. Both people drink from it at the same time. Ana recognised the form, an almost identical vessel exists in Atzompa. Two distant cultures independently shaped the same idea in clay.
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Ana now teaches her daughters. They shape the clay, fire the kiln, welcome visitors and manage the workshop’s social media. The youngest made the most distinctive mezcal cup I have ever seen: a playful little bullcup. I bought four.
Ana’s own studio, yes, I thought of Virginia Woolf too, is the physical expression of her freedom: the space she earned to decide what pieces are made, with what materials, in which parts of the house, at what price, and where they’re shown.
The freedom to make, unmake and make mistakes. That freedom now takes her work to Zona MACO and to a gallery in Japan. Ana goes with her family. The studio hasn’t separated her from them.
* This post was sponsored by TOE Travel Studio *
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Photos by Carlos Villalobos for TOE Travel
Leave a Reply