Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The chance for the tourist to be humiliated followed, and I jumped at the opportunity.
Climbing into the potter's chair felt like saddling a strange animal. I pushed the heavy
stone wheel with my feet. It was awkward. With images of Fred Flintstone trying to start
his car, I struggled to get it going. My foot nearly got pinched and dragged by the rough
wheel under the brace of the table—which would have made me, quite likely, the first per-
son to lose a leg to a potter's wheel.
The potter's son helped me get the wheel turning full-steam, and then slammed a blob
of clay onto my spinning work table. I cupped it, and it wobbled. He showed me how to
be gentle with the clay. As he trickled on some water and guided my fingers and thumbs,
the clay came to life. But my creation was still a clumsy little baby…eventually made el-
egant, effortlessly, by my teenaged teacher.
Glancing down the row of eight stations like the one I was sitting at, all under the
shade of a corrugated tin roof, I imagined this cottage industry in full swing. And I appre-
ciated the timelessness of the technology. While the advent of plastic must have done to
pottery what the advent of cars did to blacksmithing, indigenous people want vessels that
are of the earth, made by hand, and ornamented with the iconography of their ancestors.
And, as long as there are indigenous people—even if there are no tourists seeking souven-
irs—there will be potters in Latin America.
