Near Oaxaca City, in Santa Maria Atzompa, a town famous for its green glazed pottery, stands the Taller Ruiz López, where the artisan Rufina Ruiz López creates utilitarian clay pieces. This workshop has pioneered creating more than just artisanal production; they were the first to stop using green glaze and to start collaborating with different designers. And thus, their pieces began taking on new shapes and forms. Although this is a controversial process—since changing the shape of traditional objects to satisfy a specific public commercially can sometimes imply a “whitening” of the object—it has allowed the workshop to expand and grow. Today, they design tableware and pieces for restaurants, such as Criollo, and many other objects, such as comales, frying pans, pots, and many others. In recent years and largely thanks to the incorporation of these new designs and their dedication, Taller Ruiz López has grown significantly.
Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Ramsés Viazcán, who met Rufina a few years ago at the ceramics workshops of the Centro de Investigaciones de Diseño Industrial in Mexico City and became good friends. Together, Ramsés, Rufina, and talented designer Ana Luz Chamú brought to life a project called Frontera, a portable water cooler made from the distinctive Atzompa clay. It is a beautiful object, not only because of its design, but also because of its deep connection to the place where it is created.
In Atzompa, every year during the Holy Week season, the traditional “chivos de chia” are created, small clay figurines in the shape of a lamb that symbolize rebirth. These figurines are covered with chia seeds on the outside, and when water is poured inside, the seeds germinate as if they were wool. This phenomenon, known as evaporative cooling, is a natural process where the porosity of the clay allows the water to flow out, which then condenses and lowers the temperature of the water inside. This process of sweating is called oozing. Upon observing this remarkable process, the designers conceived a piece that would use the same physical principle to cool water and enjoy it fresh at any time.
Thus Frontera was born as a water container with the main quality of being a water cooler. As if by magic, when filled with water and in less than thirty minutes, its temperature decreases to 7°C.
To do so, Frontera combines materials that rarely coexist together, clay and metal. The clay, with its natural cooling capacity, and the metal, which serves as a base and condensation recipient, result in fresh water with a slight taste of clay. Ramsés tells me how this flavor evokes memories of his childhood when he visited his grandparents in Oaxaca and drank clay-flavored water from the pot where his grandmother used to store it. But this memory is not exclusive to the designer; it is part of the common heritage of many people in Mexico.
When delving deeper into its meaning, Ramsés and his team discovered that, for many, clay is associated with poverty and marginalization, linked to indigeneity, tradition, and the past.
Therefore, redefining and revaluing this material acquires significant importance in a country like Mexico, where the word “artisanal,” unlike in other contexts, evokes precisely those connotations. Like other researchers, Ramsés believes that artisan crafts must evolve and transform themselves in their primary features; otherwise, they will endure as exotic or ritual objects. This transformation can be achieved through design, giving new forms and uses. The idea is to redefine and revalue the material so that it lives not only in the forgotten clay pots in the kitchen, but also integrates into the everyday spaces of modern life.
Fired clay pot: do not put it in the cabinet of rare objects. It would play a bad role. Its beauty is allied to the liquid it contains and the thirst it quenches. Its beauty is bodily: I see it, I touch it, I smell it, I hear it. If it is empty, it must be filled; if it is full, it must be emptied…”
Octavio Paz
Ramsés explains that his goal is precisely to resignify this material, “it’s a lie that clay and ceramics are not contemporary. We use them, and we will continue to use them, but there is a narrative that categorizes them as elements of the past. We just have to find their place and their moment”.
No material is inherently better or worse, and the connotations surrounding them must be constantly questioned. Of course, it is important to ask ourselves, “what is it most pertinent for?” In the case of Frontera, given its genealogy, it is pertinent to cool water.
Cooling water in clay is not something new—such examples exist as Spanish botijos and Peruvian jugs—but the concept of Frontera is precisely the contrast of ideas. On the one hand, the tradition is rooted in an ancestral clay of limited production, and on the other, modernity is represented by an anodized polished metal of high production.
Although the design and development of the piece were carried out a few years ago, it had not been produced on a large scale due to high costs and lack of infrastructure. Recently, the project was reactivated thanks to the opportunity provided by Ensamble Artesano—a space for exchange and collaboration between artisans and designers to promote artisan production in Mexico and that, thanks to the support of various foundations, provides funding to strengthen artisan projects.
There are many challenges behind the creation of these pieces. Molds are used to cast the pieces, but since they are made in a workshop without temperature control, unfavorable conditions can cause them to break or deform easily. In addition, the process involves multiple steps, such as casting, burnishing, first burn, parboiling, second burn, packaging, and transportation. Each piece requires an average of approximately fifteen hours of production.
Ramsés and his design team moved to Oaxaca for several months to carry out this first production in collaboration with Rufina. For both designers and artisans, it is important to work together for many reasons, he tells me. “Working together entails learning, understanding the piece, and making adjustments. I get involved in the project because otherwise, it would just be manufacturing. On the other hand, by being there, we eat together, build bonds, and understand that many things happen beyond production. Rescuing the link between people, territory, and heritage is essential. That takes time, and it’s important to participate in the process together.”
A dialogue between materials and, at the same time, an encounter between tradition and modernity.
Frontera is a statement piece, a dialogue between tradition and modernity, between ancient knowledge and contemporary uses. Hence its name, the conceptual place where materials associated with different uses and times confront each other, precisely at the “frontier”. Here is where the past and the present meet, the handmade versus the industrial, clay versus metal. These are ideas that oppose and polarize, but by finding the inherent benefits of each, they can have a very interesting dialogue within a single piece, both in functional and metaphorical terms.
