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| Tonala has made pottery its most characteristic sign. At the end of the 19th. century, the priest Jaime Anestagasti referred to this village in his Brevisimas notas de la historia antigua y moderna de Tonalá as the "port of earthenware," to which "muleteers from faraway places" would come for supplies of ceramics. |
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| This eloquent statement indicates the grat demand there was for Tonaltecan ceramic ware during the 19th. century. Howevere this earthenware has been held in high esteem for a very long time, as travellers and historians since the 17th. century have testified. |
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It has been crought to forefront during our century thanks to studies by Atl, Montenegro, Zuno, Ixca Farías and others. moreover, it has won renown at home and abroad for its variety, its functional purposes, its decorative appeal and the high quality of its manufacture. |
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| Tonalá pottery is generally known in Mexico as the earthenware from Guadalajara", since, as Atl put it, "earthenware takes the name of the most important city around wich is made. " This generic designation, however, is personalized in Tonalá, since, as Marín de Paalen tell us, "each potter specialist in one kind of earthenware and that is how he gains recognition among the inhabitants of the village." |
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| Each crafted object has its own magic, an aura of grace that seduces and captivates. The beauty of some ceramic pieces may be the most inmediate of these seductions, but by no means is it the only aspect that allures us to the ever-mysterious form of earthenware. Clay itself is charged with many different means: from the creation myth that god made a man out of clay, to the proud nationalistic comparison between a Mexican´s skin and the color of his or her land. |
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| The earthenware gourd jicara was Mexico´s emblem in nationalistic painting literature of the 30s and 40s. For Europeans, from the 16th century onwards, and later for North Americans, it became, in turn, an emblem of exoticism, of "otherness,". The seductive powers of Tonalá pottery live in a unique complicity with our senses. |
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The silhouttes of the original forms, of the colors and of the drawings may be seen from afar. The marked and yet ambiguous naweté of the pieces gives them an air of simplicity, freshness and sincerity; in short, it makes them strinkingly graceful and natural. It is sais that the water kept in Tonalá earthenware acquires a purer flavor, maintaining its spring freshness. However, the true guest of honor at this banquet is the sense os smell |
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| Tonalá pottery has been known for a long time now as the "aromatic earthenware" because it gives off a very particular smell when filled with water, which some attribute to the mixture of clays, and others to the first finish applied to the pot before it is fired. |
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The defenders of the first hypothesis argue that this accounts for the particular smell earth after it rains. In the making of Tonalá pottery (a polished or burnished earthenware which is only fired once), the artisans use a technique passed down from their pre-hispanic ancestors. |
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It is in jalisco where from 400 to 600 AD, the finest works of glazed ceramics in all of western Mexico would emerge. |
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Text extracts from Artes de Mexico Magazine books Number 14