Oaxaca black pottery: the workshop that paints nothing
A short A1 Spanish reading about San Bartolo Coyotepec: in Lucía's workshop they use no electric wheel and no paint, and the kiln supplies the colour.
El barro negro de Oaxaca no lleva pintura
Reading for practice
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The narrator visits a pottery workshop in San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. There is no electric wheel: the potter shapes a jar on two clay plates, one turned face down under the other. The clay starts out grey and is never painted or glazed; it is burnished with a quartz stone, and the closed, low-air kiln gives it its black colour. The text is built on present-tense negatives and ends with questions for the reader.
Hoy visito el taller de Lucía. Aquí no hay torno eléctrico. Lucía usa dos platos de barro: uno está boca abajo y el otro está encima. Ella mueve el plato de arriba con las manos. El plato no tiene motor.
Lucía prepara un jarrón alto. El barro está húmedo y no es negro: es gris. Los turistas miran el barro gris y no entienden nada.
Lucía no pinta el jarrón. En este taller no usan pintura y no usan esmalte. Antes del horno, ella pule la pieza con una piedra de cuarzo. La piedra deja la superficie lisa y brillante.
El horno hace el resto. Los alfareros lo cierran y no dejan entrar mucho aire. Dentro hay poco oxígeno y mucho humo. El barro entra gris y las piezas pulidas salen negras. El color viene del barro y del fuego, no de un bote de pintura.
No todas las piezas brillan. Las piezas mate son más resistentes: en Oaxaca, muchas fábricas de mezcal guardan la bebida en cántaros grises.
La alfarería de este pueblo es muy antigua. El brillo negro es más nuevo: empieza en los años cincuenta, gracias a una alfarera del pueblo, doña Rosa.
Compro una figura pequeña, del tamaño de mi mano. En mi casa no está en un armario: está en la ventana, con el sol de la tarde.
¿Y tú? ¿Trabajas con las manos en algún taller o en casa? ¿Qué material te gusta más: el barro, la madera o el vidrio? ¿Compras artesanía cuando viajas?
About this article
What you'll learn
Present-tense negation: no before the verb, no hay, no ... nada, no todas, and no in front of a phrase. Pottery vocabulary: barro, taller, horno, alfarero, cántaro.
The narrator visits a pottery workshop in San Bartolo Coyotepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. There is no electric wheel: the potter shapes a jar on two clay plates, one turned face down under the other. The clay starts out grey and is never painted or glazed; it is burnished with a quartz stone, and the closed, low-air kiln gives it its black colour. The text is built on present-tense negatives and ends with questions for the reader.
After reading
Article learning block
Phrases, words, grammar, and quick practice from this text.
Phrases for training
Add useful phrases to SRS or mark them as already known.
boca abajo
newface down, upside down
A fixed phrase, literally "mouth down". In the text the lower clay plate sits boca abajo and supports the upper one.
It works for objects placed upside down and for a person lying face down. The opposite is boca arriba.
El horno hace el resto
newto do the rest
Hacer el resto means to do what is left. The potter polishes the piece and the kiln does the rest: it changes the colour.
A tidy way to say that the remaining work happens on its own. Spanish says el resto, with the article.
del tamaño de mi mano
newthe size of
Del tamaño de + noun gives a size by comparison: the size of my hand.
Useful when you do not know exact measurements: del tamaño de una moneda, del tamaño de un libro.
gracias a
newthanks to
Gracias a + noun means thanks to someone or something. It is not the same as plain gracias, which means thank you.
It marks a cause with a positive tone: gracias a doña Rosa, gracias a la lluvia.
Key words
Vocabulary that carries the school-day topic.
el barro
el barro
clay
Barro is the damp clay a potter works with. The same word also means mud on a road.
Trabajar el barro is to work with clay. The raw mineral itself is more often called arcilla.
el taller
el taller
workshop
A taller is a place where someone works with their hands: a pottery workshop, a car repair shop. It also names a short practical class.
It looks like English "taller" but has nothing to do with height. Common uses: taller de cerámica, taller mecánico.
el horno
el horno
oven; kiln
One word covers the kitchen oven and the kiln of a potter or baker. In the text it is the kiln that turns the clay black.
Hence pollo al horno, roast chicken. A bakery can also be called el horno.
el alfarero, la alfarera
Los alfareros
potter
A normal masculine and feminine pair: el alfarero, la alfarera. The text uses both, una alfarera del pueblo, doña Rosa and los alfareros.
The word came into Spanish from Andalusi Arabic, but pottery in Spain is far older: what the Arabs brought were new techniques, such as glaze. The craft itself is la alfarería.
pulir (pule)
pule
to polish, to burnish
Pulir is a regular -ir verb with no stem change: pulo, pules, pule, pulimos, pulís, pulen.
It also works figuratively: pulir un texto means to polish a piece of writing.
el cántaro
cántaros
large clay jug, pitcher
A cántaro is a big clay vessel for water or another drink. The written accent marks the stress on the first syllable.
It gives the idiom llover a cántaros, to rain heavily.
Grammar in context
Patterns from the text worth noticing after reading.
no before the verb
Lucía no pinta el jarrón
Lucía does not paint the jar
To negate an action, put no immediately before the verb: Lucía no pinta. Only short object pronouns may come between them, as in no lo pinta.
This is the basic Spanish negative pattern: no helper verb like English "does not" is needed.
no hay
no hay torno eléctrico
there is not, there are not
Hay never changes for number: hay un plato, hay dos platos. The negative is just as simple: no hay. After no hay the indefinite article usually drops, hence no hay torno eléctrico in the text.
The pair hay / no hay covers almost everything you need to say about what a place contains.
no ... nada
no entienden nada
they understand nothing
When nada follows the verb, no stays in front of it: no entienden nada. Two negative words in Spanish do not cancel each other out.
Nadie and nunca behave the same way: no viene nadie. If the negative word comes before the verb instead, no disappears: Nada entienden.
no todas
No todas las piezas brillan
not all
Here no negates the word todas, not the verb. No todas las piezas brillan means some pieces shine and some do not.
Compare Ninguna pieza brilla, no piece shines. The meanings are far apart and the forms look close.
no before another element
no de un bote de pintura
and not from a paint tin
No does not have to sit next to the verb. Here viene stays affirmative and no negates only the phrase de un bote de pintura.
The pattern "X, no Y" is a neat way to correct someone: Es de barro, no de plástico.
está húmedo, no es negro
El barro está húmedo y no es negro
wet right now, grey by nature
Estar describes a state at a given moment: the clay is wet now. Ser describes what something is: it is grey, not black. That is why both verbs appear in one sentence.
Colour, material and origin normally take ser; a passing state and location take estar, as in la figura está en la ventana.
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