It took Isaiah Zagar nine years to make the 7,000-square-foot tile mosaic wrapping around the Painted Bride building in Philadelphia’s Old City. The work stood for a quarter century, then
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José Luis Cortéz Hernández is one of the most prolific of Jalisco’s famous burnished potters of Tonalá. With a career of over three decades, he is an acknowledged master in his field.
That’s quite an accomplishment for an “outsider.” Tonalá burnished pottery has centuries of history; its secrets are jealously guarded by families with generations of experience.
The pottery is distinguished by the fact that, instead of being glazed, it is rubbed with a stone before firing to give it shine. More obvious are the traditional decorative motifs with highly stylized images of animals, plants and fantastical creatures called