Please Allow Me to Introduce Valentin Lopez

This is master potter Valentin Lopez. Mark him well, for importing Nicaraguan ceramics could be a real money-spinner…

I’m in Nicaragua’s Masaya province, on a pueblo blanco (white village) handicraft hunt with Delia Rueda of IL’s local office in colonial Granada. Delia will act as my translator, and hopefully help me nab a few bargains.

With pottery-making traditions dating back to pre-Columbian times, San Juan de Oriente, lying between the volcanoes of Masaya and Mombacho, is an artisan village famous throughout Nicaragua. Selling a fabulous array of vases, plates, jars and other ornamental ceramics from tiny front rooms or street-side stalls, many families have their own workshops and open wood furnaces where the pottery gets fired.

Elegant black and white vases with pre-Columbian designs that I’ve only ever seen in museums depict stylized fish, birds, animals, iguanas, and flowers. Even for a casual shopper, deciding which pieces to buy is likely to be a huge problem. Everything is all so gorgeous.

Rosa, a sweet-faced youngster in charge of one eye-catching display of ceramics, takes us to the family workshop to meet her father. Valentin Lopez is carrying on the family tradition--his father and grandfather were village potters, too. By San Juan de Oriente standards, this enterprise is big, employing 12 permanent workers. But each piece is handmade and hand-painted, so even with all that manpower, the supply capacity here is around 400 pieces per month…and that depends on drying conditions.

A young guy first demonstrates the art of the potter’s wheel. He’s already an expert, because within a few short minutes, a pot is formed. It’s then ready for its initial drying before getting coated in white zinc oxide.

We then see the later painting and decoration stage of the pot-making process. Some colors come from oxides bought from Leon; others are straight from the land. Señor Lopez picks up a chunk of malachite to explain where the green pigment comes from. The clay itself is taken from clay mines in the fields, then initially softened with the feet.

To give you an idea of how importing Nicaraguan ceramics could be a real money-spinner, consider the prices charged by popular folk art websites. There, unsuspecting U.S. buyers pay from $26 for five-inch-high pots to $105 for 14-inch-high pots.

Signed by the master potter himself, Valentin Lopez produces quality ceramics that are just as lovely...yet his smallest pots cost but $1. Most medium-to-large ceramics range from 60 to 100 cordobas ($3.20 to $5.40). For large orders, Señor Lopez says he’ll give a discount of up to 20 cordobas apiece ($1) for the majority of ceramic wares (obviously, this doesn’t apply to the $1 pots!).

I’m now the proud owner of a classy eight-inch vase pigmented with a mottled background of brown, green, and yellow. It’s decorated with blue and brown fishes with bee-stung scarlet lips that swim through curtains of emerald seaweed. For just 60 cordobas ($3.20), this has to be my best bargain buy ever.

Steenie Harvey
Roving Europe Editor (on loan to Nicaragua), International Living

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P.S. I’ll have more from Señor Lopez in an upcoming IL print issue...and also take you to a pueblo blanco village renowned amongst locals for its handmade furniture. Don’t bother scouring the guidebooks--the village isn’t even mentioned--but this is where Delia, my translator, bought her own quality rocking chairs.