Tour of the Talavera Factory

On Tuesday of last week, I had run out of ideas for things to show my parents in the Puebla-Cholula area.  Luckily, my mother is a resourceful and independent woman and had come prepared for just such an incident. Upon arriving at their hotel room, she announced that they were interested in touring a talavera factory in Puebla.  Talavera is the most traditional of the Poblano artisanal crafts - an extremely durable (or so they say) type of pottery that is traditionally painted blue and white, though it may come in any variety of colors.  The specific shop that she found online is called Uriarte Talavera.  For anyone in the Puebla area, I would strongly recommend taking a tour as it is very interesting, cheap, and only takes about thirty minutes.  On the other hand, I would strongly recommend against purchasing talavera from this story. While it appeared to be extremely high quality, the prices were literally about 5 to 10 times what they are in other places.  The woman working at the desk told me that the cost of a tour is 50 pesos, but that noone there speaks english, so they wouldn't be able to help my parents.  I offered to translate, so she admitted me for free.  The tour is spontaneous and informal which, for me, made it even better -no group, no prepared speech.

The process of creating talavera is extremely intricate and takes about 1 to 2 months for each peace from start to finish. I don't think it would take that long if you were only making one piece at a time.  Every part of the process is completed by hand.  They start out by mixing the clay with water until they get the consistency they like; this usually takes a couple weeks.

Then the pieces are either hand formed, spun on a pottery wheel, or, if they are massive, pressed into molds.  After the piece has been allowed to dry for one to two days, they put it in an oven for 12 hours at 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 F).

Next, some other workers work on mixing the traditional plant based chemicals until they get the color they want.  Then some workers use stencils to draw on the designs with charcoal. This way, the ladies who paint the pieces will have guidelines to work with.  Every piece is painted by hand by a few ladies sitting in a back room of the factory.  After the glaze has dried for another day of two, it goes into top secret super ovens that we weren't allowed to photograph. This oven burns at 1200 C (2192 F) for another 24 hours.... I think.  After our tour of the factory we just walked around Puebla for a while and returned to the hotel to prepare for our trip. To be continued....