Day Twenty-Seven - Puebla (July 23, 2010)

We started off the day with a visit to the “Talavera de Uriarte” workshop. Talavera is a type of Mexican pottery and the authentic pieces only come from Puebla. Talavera pieces, which usually have a white glaze [and often designs in blue], are hand-crafted on a potter’s wheel and carefully painted by hand.

The particular workshop where we went is known worldwide and is often contracted to complete various “special projects.” They make many pieces, including flower vases, serving platters, dinner sets, and more. Our guide told us that a couple from Chicago recently had the artists at the workshop design an entire Talavera swimming pool for their house...maybe one day I'll be rich enough to do that too!  We took a tour through the workshop and observed the different steps that go into making this pottery, including: mixing the paint, forming the clay, putting on the initial glaze, and the intricacies of painting the final products.  Here are some of the various processes:

Grinding cobalt and mixing it with liquid to make the blue-colored paint:

Sculpting the clay into various shapes and sizes:

Carefully painting the glazed piece with freshly-mixed paints:

Some "special projects" I found while walking around included a small plate with a Coca-Cola design and a HUGE plate for Mexico's upcoming bicentennial (200-year anniversary of independence from Spain). 

Afterwards, we headed to the Biblioteca Palafoxiana and a local museum, Museo Amparo. The Biblioteca (library) was established in 1646 and contains over 42,000 books and manuscripts which date between 1473 and 1910. The library was beautifully decorated and reminded me of The Morgan Library in Manhattan and the Bodleian Library in Oxford….ahhhh, memories…

As for the museum, it contains many pieces of work from the Zapotec, Huasteca, Maya, Olmec, and Aztec cultures (aka, the stuff is pretty old!). In this area of Puebla, I think my favorite building is the Cathedral of Puebla (which is pictured on the 500 peso bill). Lit up at night, it looked like something out of an old European city.

At night, a few of us went to see “Shrek – El Capítulo Final” in the movies. Again, the movie was completely dubbed over in Spanish (but done much better than Eclipse) and I understood most of it! Hooray for knowing that my Spanish skills have improved immensely on this trip!!!! Here are some of the fun posters from the movie theater's lobby: