RITISH
COLUMBIA
a

Visiting the Potters of Nicaragua

By the time I arrived at the Managua,
Nicaragua airport in January of 2009, I had
surrendered my fate to the gods, not because
the flight had been scary, but because I was
about to embark on a two-week “brigade” in
a country that I had never visited with a group
that I had only contacted by email. Potters for
Peace has been around since 1998 but I had
never heard of them so just in case everything
fell through, I had contact information for a
couple of hotels in my back pocket.

I needn't have worried, as I soon spotted,
among the crowd outside the glass doors, a
tall thin man waving a hand-lettered “Potters
for Peace” sign. This was Robert, an American
who, with his wife Bev, runs the organization
from their home in Managua. I met a few of
the other brigadistas (as we were called) who
had arrived earlier and we all piled into a van
that took us to our first night’s lodging at a
Kairos Centro, a hostel for non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), where we crept into
our dorm rooms so as not to wake earlier
arrivals who were already sleeping.

‘The next morning we met our fellow sleepers
and had an orientation meeting before setting
out on an unforgettable journey through the
Nicaraguan countryside, visiting subsistence
potters who work with clay that they dig out
of the ground and fire in simple wood-fired
kilns. The potters of Nicaragua don't glaze
their work as they can't afford the electricity
to fire a kiln to a high enough temperature
to flux a glaze, or the chemicals for glazes.
Instead they burnish their work and decorate

it with coloured slip.

By Patty Osborne

Slip decorated, burnished and carved work from San Juan de Oriente

During the two-week brigade we learned
about Nicaragua’s tumultuous history which
has been hugely affected by natural disasters
(hurricanes and earthquakes) and U.S. foreign
policy, we learned to make tortillas and cook
them ona clay comal, and we met potters who
work with almost no tools and make mostly
piggy banks as well as potters who create
sophisticated work that is so finely burnished
it looks like it’s been glazed.

We met Maria who makes the cutest piggy
banks in Nicaragua and, until Potters for
Peace built her a small outside kiln, fired her
work in her smoky kitchen stove. We walked
up a mountainside (the road was washed out)
to get to one of the most isolated potteries
where four sisters and their niece create some
of the wackiest pots and sculptures that I’ve
ever seen, and we slept outside on the terrace
of a decaying villa in San Juan de Limay, a
town with more horses and bicycles than cars,
where we had a go at carving sandstone with
the help of the apprentices of Oscar Casco, a

Innovative designs from Loma Panda.

well-know carver who maintains his studio in
the village.

All the drigadistas soon fell in love with
the simple shapes and warm, soft finish of
the low-fire, burnished pottery and with the
people who welcomed us into their homes
and studios (often these are one and the
same). Partway through the trip I realized
that I couldn't possibly take in everything I
was seeing and feeling (or get all the pottery
that I wanted to buy into my suitcase for
the trip home), so I resolved to come back
for more. The next January I again landed
at the Managua airport and this time I was
confident that things would work out and I
was eager tO meet more potters and. revisit
some of the people and places I had loved the
first time around.

On this brigade we spent two days helping
Olga Reyes and her family replace a traditional
kiln that had been kicked over by their horse.

Continued on Page 11,
Clay & horse manure

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter : November 2011

10