A Few More Examples of Vintage Mexican Pottery

For those of us in the Southwest, the fusion of cultures has always been evident in our lives, and a big part of the reason we are so passionate about the places we live.

Who are we? We're Texans. We aren't Swedish-Texans or Mexican-Texans or African-Texans or German-Texans or Vietnamese-Texans or Spanish-Texans or Californian-Texans or New Yorker-Texans. No matter where we're from or how we grew up, we aren't hyphenated: we're all one. The American Melting Pot is alive and well and still doing its good work in Texas.

This applies to our decorating styles as well as the way we live and go about our business every day. And Mexican pottery is a part of the exuberant style that characterizes Texas homes of all sorts.

Some of Pecan Corner's more popular posts, week in and week out, are about collecting vintage Mexican pottery. So I thought I'd show off some more of my collection, and add a little information about the styles and types.

The pieces that stay with me are special in their own right - my focus has always been simply whether I love the individual piece. As antiquers, though, we've sold a lot of it over the years, and I tend to sell things if the price shoots up - mainly so I don't have to worry about breaking something valuable! So while I never needed to learn about it in order to collect, I did learn some things in order to sell those pieces that don't need to stay in my house.

There was a time where Mexican pottery chicken casseroles were as common in Texas homes as Singer sewing machines. For years, we bought them weekly and sold them just as quickly. So many of them have moved in to larger collections now that they are harder to find. This one was a present from Paul a couple of years ago. We think the "come hither" look in her eyes is adorable.

This pottery skillet is done in a style called "Fantasia", for obvious reasons. Most commonly found in the blue decoration on cream colored background like this one, it can also be found in other colors, such as green
on terracotta ground. The all-over pattern of stylized florals and animals in a single color is the telltale characteristic. Paul loves this, and is partial to the blue-and-cream.

The urn-shaped vases in this group are my favorite type of ware, called "Petatillo". The detailed crosshatching filling all the space surrounding the main images make it immediately recognizable. Written in pencil on the bottom of the largest one is "Guadalahara Bought in Tampico 1939". The middle-sized one has the partial remains of its original paper label "La Casa Del _____ Monterrey".

This colorful wall plate is purely decorative, and made of "burnished ware", meaning the partially-dried clay was rubbed, or burnished, to a sheen with a stick. Probably made in Tonala, this technique was shared by pueblo Indian potters, including the famous San Ildefonso wares. It isn't as highly fired as the lead-glazed redware that is my favorite, so it didn't last as long, but it has a character all its own.

My bean pots are just that: bean pots. Made for households to cook in, utilitarian but still decorated to make the work a little more pleasant. we all love pretty dishes, no matter what culture we come from. And that may be almost instinctual - pottery making was one of mankind's earliest arts, and those early pieces are identifiable because they are decorated.

In our globally-uniform professionally-marketed designer-driven retail culture, everything is the same, no matter where it is from. Machine-made or hand-made doesn't change that, and we can find ourselves driven from novelty to novelty in a fruitless search for the authentic and original.

This old pottery is both of those things. Authentic and produced by people who sold it to make a living using the materials at hand and the techniques developed by their grandfathers, original in the work of each artist that painted it using his own ideas and natural talent to express himself that day.

It is what it is. There's very little we can truthfully say that about these days.

6/6/11 Update: Thanks to Pat @ SIGIS for the link! :-)

A Texican Christmas Tree

We are slowly changing over the decor in our house to be a little more SouthWestern / Old West / Texican Ranch style (YAY! some of our cute things can come out of storage!), and this year we used items from my collections to decorate the Christmas tree.

Some things are on our tree every year - like the Nina, Pinta & Santa Maria ships in bottles and old world explorers globes. We carried these in our gift shop when we lived on the coast. Down there, they were "beachy". And I saw pics of a great steam punk Christmas tree the other day that used similar ones of steam ships (done by Steampunk Awareness on Facebook).




Paul had the brilliant idea of putting hangers on my redware salt & pepper shakers (they are in the Tlaquepaque style). He also me brought the tiny Native American baskets.








The DeGrazia bells are miniature versions of the traditional wind bells so common in Arizona and New Mexico. I have some large ones hanging on the porch. Their deep and sonorous toll is a low, occasional sound on the wind. Because of their weight, it takes a strong wind to move them at all, so high or constant winds are not a problem for them.



Here's a bona-fide mexican pottery ornament. This type of ware is called "burnished", and it is characteristic of some Tonala pottery. The piece is rubbed - or burnished - with a smooth stick before firing. This gives it a nice matte finish compared to glazed pottery. My heart still belongs to the old lead-glazed redware, though.



This box reminds me I need to show off my Mexican lacquerware sometime. That is a stylized rabbit figure in case you can't tell. This kind of work used to be done by painting on layers and carving down to the different colors. Now, it is often done as a sort of decopage, by pasting on cut-out paper shapes and then painting and glazing over them. Mexico is the only other culture to have developed genuine lacquer work as a decorative art.




The little Madonna was originally part of a creche set.






What is a tree without toys? This pottery whistle and pyrography (wood burned) gourd rattle are worlds apart but both are owls! :-)

Feliz Navidad to one and all!

Collecting Vintage Mexican Pottery

Show and tell time! :-) I started collecting old lead-glazed mexican pottery in the late 1970s, back when no one was interested in it. Most of the pieces I like best were made in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. My collection is not huge, because I only keep those pieces that are my favorites. Over the years of course it has become popular and may sometimes be very pricey. But great pieces are still out there, and you can still make a nice collection without much investment.


While it is probably ok to handle it (you can wash your hands after), lead-glazed pots should not be used to serve food. Although the risk of lead leaching into the food is small (most people today in their 50s or older who grew up or lived in the southwest - not to mention Mexico - have eaten out of this stuff before learning it was not wise to do so), it is better to be safe than sorry.

Lead glazes were not used on all old mexican pottery. Many types, including burnished ware, were free of lead. Also, newer redware and yellow-ware pots do not have lead in the glaze and are still beautiful, so they are also an option. "Redware" and "Yellow Ware" refer to the color of the clay the pots are made of. The bean pots below are "redware".



The main thing I love about mexican pottery is that it makes utility beautiful. With each piece, natural talent shows in the way it was painted or formed or glazed. I love when I can see the
fingerprints of the potter or glazer in a finished piece. I love the detailed paintings that reflect natural talent - trained perhaps in pottery but not in art. I love the flaws that make it perfect.

Here are two recent additions to my collection. The little nested ashtray set is just right for Fall decorating, with its black crow. I think it is the only piece I have with a black bird on it (though I
have many with birds - birds are probably my favorite animal in art). I found it in a local secondhand shop.


This ADORABLE little turkey casserole is the latest. He was my birthday present from Paul (Thank you honey!). Our friends had gotten him recently at an auction, and had put him up for sale. So thanks, too, to our friends for selling it!

We used to find chicken and turkey casseroles often, out in West Texas. We sold a lot of them! I only have one chicken casserole and now this turkey one in my collection. Prior to that, the only chicken I had kept for any length of time was a Tlaquepaque one that eventually got too valuable to keep!


Tlaquepaque is the name of a region in Mexico. Mexican pottery - actually nearly all pottery from any country - is classified by the region in which it was made. I am not snobbish about the regions I collect, because monetary value has nothing to do with why I love these pots. So I don't study them and I am no expert. I just buy what I like.

I love them because they were a part of the ordinary work and life of ordinary people. For all of us who live in the Southwest, they are a part of our heritage. Our Melting Pot American Heritage!


12/23/10 - updating to add a new tag and link to a newer post on Mexican Pottery. Thanks for visiting and I hope you'll tell me about your own collection too. :-)