Clay and Hieroglyphs Workshop in San Mateo Ixtatan

During our visit to San Mateo Ixtatan, we offered to facilitate a workshop on clay and hieroglyphs with Alonso for middle school students. Throughout the workshop students learned about Maya hieroglyphs and techniques of working with clay. After Alonso gave an introduction on the Maya hieroglyphs, students drew the glyphs of their Maya names, first on paper and later on a piece of clay block. After this we started the big project, which was to make clay pots with lids for the black salt and draw the hieroglyph “K'ik' Atz'am” (black salt) on them. None of the students had worked with clay before, so we showed them how they can use the coil technique for building the pots, and by the time they were ready to do the decorations, we saw little pieces of art forming in their hands, some pots with cats and birds and rancheros were being born. Both the students and us have enjoyed the workshop very much; it was a wonderful experience to work together for a week and see the great progress of the group. Throughout the workshop we were only using materials that were available locally: we made the tools together with the students, used the local clay from the water filter workshop and fired the ceramic pieces in the kiln, used for the filters. We have been encouraging students to use the skills they had learned and continue their work with clay in the future. I am looking forward to the next visit when we will continue the workshop!

Starting the work with clay

The glyphs of the Maya names

Drawing the glyph of K'ik' Atz'am on the pot

With the students after taking the pieces to the kiln