Talavera Dinnerware

Talavera: An Essential Component in a Southwest Mexican Home

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When creating a southwest Mexican rustic home decor, talavera pottery can add a gorgeous finishing touch. Talavera pottery plays an important role in Mexican decor because of the unique styles, colors and designs of each creation. Your home will be the talk of the neighborhood and no one has to know you didn’t pay a fortune. Here’s some information about talavera pottery and ways you can use it for home decoration.

Authentic Talavera PlateWhat is Talavera Pottery?

Talavera pottery is created with majolica earthenware, which is a type of ceramic that is glazed and white in color. The pottery was introduced to Mexico by Spaniards. It is used to decorate many patios, commercial and residential buildings, social and business squares, and even homes in Mexico.

A city in Mexico called Puebla was established in 1531 and almost immediately became the center of earthenware production. Today, the pottery is still being made with the same techniques that were used during the 16th Century, and it is the oldest tin-glazed ceramic in America.

Talavera Products for Home Decor

When shopping for talavera pottery, you must think out of the box. Look around for a variety of products, such as talavera plates, jars, pots, vases and religious figurines. You can create a southwestern decor in every room of your home using various types of pottery. Talavera pottery can be placed in room corners on the floor or next to pieces of equipal furniture such as sofas, chairs or floor lamps. Add Talavera plates to your kitchen hutch or China cabinet display along with Mexican glassware (such as blue rim margarita drinking glasses).

On the patio, use colorful outdoor equipal patio furniture along with talavera planting pots. These look lovely on wood, brick or stone patios…whatever fits your style. Hang a relaxing hammock nearby and complete your yard decor with matching bird feeders and birdhouses, garden statues (with Mexican flare), fountains and stepping-stones!

Buy pottery products to match your other southwest home decor items in color and theme. This will give every room a true southwest Mexican rustic home decor. You can buy authentic or imitation talavera pottery. Either way, make sure you’re getting quality items and buy only from a reputable retailer. There are many websites offering pottery, but beware of those that don’t guarantee the quality of their products. Also, look for other great items such as rustic sconce light covers and Mexican tin mirrors. These make great gifts for anyone that appreciates Mexican decor. You’ll want a beautifully crafted piece that will last for many years!

Admiring Talavera: Made by Hand

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Talavera – Made by hand, the craft object bears the fin­ger prints, real or metaphorical, of the per­son who fashioned it. These fingerprints are not the equivalent of the artist’s signature, for they are not a name. Nor are they a mark or brand.  They are a sign: the almost invisible scar commemorating our original brotherhood and sisterhood, made by hand, the craft object is made for hands, Not only can we see it; we can also finger it, feel it. We see the work of art but we do not touch it. The religious taboo that for­bids us to touch saints=you’ll bum your hands if you touch the Tabernacle,’ we were told as children—also applies to paintings and sculp­tures. Our relation to the industrial object is func­tional; our relation to the work of art is semi-reli­gious; our relation to the work of craftsmanship is corporeal. In reality, this last is not a relation­ship but a contact.

Talavera plates made in Pueblo, MexicoThe trans-personal nature of Talavera craftsmanship finds direct and immediate expres­sion in sensation: the body is participation. To feel is primarily to feel something or someone not ourselves. And above all, to feel with some­one. Even to feel itself, the body seeks another body we feel through others. The physical and bodily ties that bind us to others are no less pow­erful than the legal, economic and religious ties that unite us, Craftsmanship is a sign that expresses society not as work (technique) or as symbol (art, religion) but as shared physical life.

The pitcher of water or wine in the middle of the table is a point of convergence, a little sun that unites everyone present. But my wife can transform that pitcher pouring forth our drink at the table into a flower vase. Personal sensibility and imagination divert the object from its ordinary function and create a break in its meaning: it is no longer a recipient to contain liquid but one in which to display a carnation. This diversion and break link the object to another realm of sensibility: imagination. This imagination is social: the carnation in the pitcher is also a metaphorical sun shared by everyone.

In its perpetual move­ment back and forth between beauty and utility, pleasure and service, the work of craftsmanship teaches us lessons in sociability. At fiestas and ceremonies its radiation is still more intense and total. At fiestas the collectivity communes with itself, and this communion takes place through ritual objects that almost always are handmade objects. If fiesta is participation in primordial time—the collectivity literally shares out among its members, like sacred bread, the date being commemorated—craftsmanship is a sort of fiesta of the object: it transforms a utensil into a sign of participation.

Article excerpt from Artes de Mexico Magazine – June 1992

 

 

The Ceramic Ware Known as Talavera

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Talavera is a term shrouded in mystery, though it is no less mysterious than the human persistence in shaping glazed and painted objects from the earth: objects which clink like muffled bells when struck together and allure us with their beauty. The ceramic ware known as Talavera is no doubt part of Mexico’s most important traditional art forms.

Talavera Ginger Jar by Maximo Huerta

Historically, the art of Talavera is related to certain spaces: the kitchen, the church and convent, the facade and interior of the home—as well as the workshop, where the age-old rituals of the craft are still performed. Like sculpture, this art is spatial, and it also encompasses an internal space: that of the imagery represented on its surfaces. These spaces make up a world where reality and fantasy are one, where hands that make and buy and sell join with hands that paint the shape of the artisan’s. This is the world of Talavera: a world within our own world.

Among the first natural settings for Talavera is the typical kitchen featured in Puebla: where the tiles that cover the walls—sometimes even the ceiling—and the platters of food on their way to the table, combine to form a “culinary architecture” where the interior space of the kitchen becomes a full-scale reflection of those typical dishes from Puebla—richly flavored, colorful and unique. The tiled kitchen and the Talavera dinnerware made of glazed white ceramic become a sort of echo chamber where the food is enhanced by the visual condiment of Talavera. In addition to the one afforded by the meal then, Talavera offers a pleasure that enters through the eyes. And like food, it is a pleasure that is shared.

Talavera Plate by Studio La Cupula

A very different kind of kitchen—the traditional pharmacy—was literally lined with Talavera containers which were not only practical but often strikingly handsome. These were imperme­able on the inside and were often inscribed—before they were fired—with the name of the herb or substance they would con­tain. Or, if the jars had been commissioned to be used in the pharmacy of a particular convent, they would feature the emblem of that religious order.

Churches and convents, in fact, were also natural settings for Talavera. Both housed an incredible variety of objects like the lebrillo; which was used for the both the solemn rite of baptism, as well as the banal. Day-to-day washing of hands or feet. Both the sacred and profane gestures of a community are concentra­ted in the ‘Talavera of cimrlem and convents. Though modest, this glazed curibessume pourided a sort of vivid centerpiece to the shared life of the cloister. Outside, the facades of churches were tiled with Talavera in an attempt to make the exterior syn­onymous with the wealth of gold which their altars flaunted. These facades truly project the splendor of Talavera.

Article excerpt from Artes de Mexico Magazine – June 1992