Rickety ox carts hauling burlap bags of clay... Artisans tending wood-burning fires in beehive-shaped ovens... The whir of kick-wheels spinning in backyard workshops... Time stands still in San Juan de Oriente.


Nicaraguan pottery is hand–crafted using a painstaking process, nearly 1,000 years old:

• Most of the community's craftspeople use potter's wheels to shape clay into vases and vessels.
  
• Freshly–thrown pots are etched or carved with intricate designs characteristic of the artist's signature style:
  
  • Pre–Columbian motifs
    
  • Imagery inspired by nature
    
  • Contemporary, geometric patterns
    
• Cobalt, chrome and iron mineral oxides are applied to tint the clay.
  
• The pieces are slowly fired in adobe brick kilns using a labor-intensive technique where the artist fires the pot in gradually increasing temperatures, and carefully rubs off the mineral oxide residue in stages.
  
• Achieving the desired color intensity and depth of design can take several days.
  
  
  

  Each signature Gregario Bracamonte jaguar pot takes more than a month to complete.			Working at the potter's wheel.
  Gregario Bracamonte holds a work–in–progress — one of his famous "El Jaguar" pots.			Artisan Dina Gutierrez supervises one of her potters as he carves precise designs into a vase.