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TICUL SCULTPORING
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Our team sent a member to the home of Roger
Juarez Serralta, a regional potter & sculptor who has become an
expert on Mayan art, and the preeminent artist in the world at
recreating the art of Mayan antiquity. His replicas and original
creations have won various awards and national recognition; his
pieces are displayed in publications and museums, including the Museo
de Mexico.
Serralta (or Roger, as everyone calls him)
lives in an extremely modest home in Ticul that belies its importance
as the birthplace of the most skillfully crafted, highly regarded
Mayan art on the planet. The primary workplace is a thatched-roof,
wood-and-stucco protrusion from the side of the house. The workspace
is lit with natural light coming through the door less entryways;
work materials and unfinished pieces line the walls and the edges of
the floor. The kiln is a large, dome-shaped earthen oven outside in
the yard on the opposite side of the house.
The clay he uses is barro, a natural terra
cotta found in caves. He mixes this with stone dust to form a mixture
called sascab, to which water is added. The wet sascab is then
strained through a tennis racquet and sun-dried for two days; at this
point it is still moist enough to be easily malleable, but dry enough
to hold a shape. This sascab may then be wrapped in plastic to retain
its moisture; when conditions are humid, the sascab may be stored
this way for two or three months.
For a bowl or plate, Roger typically starts
by flattening a chunk of clay by hand upon a wheel, or kabal. He
scrapes it smooth and flat and evens out the edges. Walls are formed
with pinch-pot coils strips of clay are pressed around the
edges of the base and pinched and pressed together to remove the
seams. A scraper is used to cant the walls, and a piece of wet
leather is used to smooth out the edges. The piece must then be left
for three hours in the shade drying it too quickly when
it´s wet will cause cracks. After this, it is sun-dried an
additional couple of days, and is then ready for
painting.
Roger applies color to his pieces using
entirely natural pigments used by the early Mayans, with the possible
exception of blue pigments, for which the original sources are not
precisely known. Materials used include enwove, an orange dust
pigment (adding more or less water dilutes or intensifies the color,
and makes possible such variants as red, yellow, & orange); at
choc, or tierra negra, a black pigment taken from the centers of
certain found in estuaries (red & black may be combined for
brown); vacuum, a white stone pigment; and cobalt oxide materials for
blue these come from Puebla, Jalisco and
Guadalajara.
Using various brushes, most of which he
makes himself, Roger applies tierra negra or engove freehand,
creating a Mayan figure or other image; some of his creations are
wholly original works done in the style of the ancients, while others
recreate specific pieces from antiquity. After painting, this unfired
pottery (or "greenware") is covered with wet fabric, then polished
with hematite, jade & metal. The piece is allowed to dry again,
and then fired at temperatures of 800 or 900 degrees (centigrade) in
the kiln. Roger´s art is renowned for its authenticity;
laboratory tests have revealed close similarities between the
material compositions of his creations and those of pieces from Mayan
antiquity.
Roger has been making Mayan art this way
for 26 or 27 years. Before this, he created pottery, but it was done
using more contemporary (albeit still traditional) techniques that
are widely practiced by other craftsmen Roger comes from a
family of potters. As a young man he became interested in the ancient
art and the techniques used to make it, and began to research the old
ways and styles. When he began, he used synthetic materials favored
by other contemporary potters, but as he began to research the old
craft, he started incorporating more and more of the older techniques
and materials.
He read books and asked questions, amassing knowledge
that had previously been known but not collected in one place or
known to a single individual. Through years of work, research,
experimentation, and trial & error, he came to his present degree
of mastery. He says he still learns a little more each day, and
always tries to do better, but that at this point no great mysteries
remain; hes confident he now knows all the essential artistic
secrets of the ancients.
At the present time it seems Roger shall
remain the only practitioner of the craft for some time to come
a state program to develop apprentices fell through. He is
teaching his techniques to his wife and son, but for now his craft is
entirely his own.
TravelYucatam.com expresses thanks to Ilvia L. Osceola
University of Florida for permission to reprint this article.
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