Peeking into Tzintzuntzan

From the log kept by JM on the August 2010 Chiripa buying trip to Mexico.

August 24, 2010. In Tzintzuntzan (Michoacan, Mexico) there is a handcraft market that offers a mountain of goods, including ceramics, straw baskets, cornhusk flowers, wood carvings and much more. You can see local people binging their wares for sale. 

Patient sellers often pass hours or days between sales, so Chiripa is glad to bring them needed business. The recent wet weather, with its occasional heavy deluges, has made life even ore difficult for open-air market vendors.

Behind the market is a centuries-old church and an old walled park with ancient olive trees. We cross the park, and pass through a doorway in the far wall near the church. Just down the street, and around the corner, we knock on the door of Ofelia Gamez, who is well known for the hand-painted lead-free ceramics she makes in her home. 

We interrupt Ofelia's work long enough to pick out some nice pieces for Chiripa. Ofelia's son, Manuel Morales, who also has a workshop in Tzintzuntzan, has gained an international reputation for his elegant ceramics. This sample is currently at Chiripa.

In the Garden of Stone

From the log kept by JM on the August Chiripa buying trip to Mexico.

August 22, 2010. It rained last night in Patzcuaro – hard. The water poured down the tile roofs and leaped into the streets.  Sheets of rain lashed crumbling adobe walls and soaked through improvised roof patches.  People huddled in doorways and sat in groups under the arcades. Cars looked like boxy boats navigating swift-flowing tropical rivers.

After the violent rains, the morning dawned cool and soft. The carefully-clipped grass on the renovated plaza was wet and lush. Walls were washed with luminous morning light. The wet green moss was bright against the red clay. It was a perfect morning to explore the stone garden.  

To tell the truth, it is not exactly a garden. And yet, in a way, it is. You can find it right along the roadside, as you approach the town of Tzintzuntzan. The stone garden is actually a rambling roadside display of fine cantera stonework – open to anyone who wants to stop and wander through it. High on the hill behind the stone garden, is the imposing pre-Columbian ruins built at the height of the Tarascan Empire. And just down the road there is a lovely cemetery where ancestral spirits are welcomed back to life -- with bright marigold bouquets, sweet confections and candlelight -- on the Noche de Los Muertos.

 In the stone garden there are hundreds – no, thousands – of sculptured cantera figures created by present-day local craftsmen. There are whimsical angels and demons, creatures of legend, owls, lizards, and fish with human heads. There are pensive maidens, cheerful drunks, fierce predators, quiet doves, Madonnas, and sleeping figures tired from labor. There are smiling suns, strong west winds, dragons, shepherds, saints, frogs, lumbering turtles and scavenging pigs.

And here is the best part: they are all strewn on the ground together, right next to the road: large and small, time-worn and newly carved, animal and human, earthly and spiritual, fine and crude.  There are no fences, class distinctions, security barriers or dividing walls. Each figure seems to have its own secrets, but they are all lying together in the damp grass, gathering moss. 

They are all for sale if you can get them home.  But we warn you, they are heavy.  Chiripa has done the heavy lifting, and brought a few of these stone spirits home for you.  They will bring your garden to life, and your purchase will make a stone carver happy.