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 Travel & Outdoors | April 2008 
Skeletons, Earthenware and SpongeBob Piñatas
 Gregory Dicum - NYTimes
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| | Catrinas and other Day of the Dead-ready papier-mâché figures at Nocheztli, Abraham Rosales Casillas’s shop in Tonalá. (Gregory Dicum/The New York Times) | | |
Avenida Independencia runs west from the central square in Tlaquepaque, Mexico. For several blocks it is a pedestrian street, cobbled and lined with ornate mansions that, more than a century ago, served as weekend homes for the elite of Guadalajara. Today, they are shops featuring high-end wares for other weekend homes throughout the continent.
They make things easy: they have good selections, and they’ll happily pack up your handblown glasses and carved headboard and ship them to you, or even arrange custom orders. But prices rival those in the United States. For those with a serious love of shopping, and on the lookout for deals — especially on artisanal goods like pottery, ironwork, glass and furniture — it’s worth leaving the calm elegance of Tlaquepaque for the exuberant chaos of nearby Tonalá.
Tonalá is where the professionals shop. I visited with Rebecca Allen, an interior designer based in San Francisco, who has been making regular buying trips to Tonalá for more than a decade. She is part of an ancient tradition: the town, near rich clay seams, has been a center of pottery — and of trade more broadly — for millenniums. It remains one of Mexico’s top artisanal hubs; the streets are lined with shops and ateliers, and a complex at its heart features nothing but earthenware.
On Thursday — market day — the narrow streets are choked with stands selling every imaginable item: SpongeBob piñatas, plastic flower arrangements, costume jewelry and plaster statues of drunken chimpanzees in sombreros making obscene gestures. The sweet smell of fresh frying masa perfumes the clear air.
“You have to take the time to find the good stuff,” said Ms. Allen, who was on the lookout for canvases depicting Frida Kahlo. “It’s like treasure hunting.” Her practiced eye was constantly roving, checking out the most unlikely stalls, assessing them against the tastes of her clients. At one, piled with rubber furniture feet, she found a stack of natural-bristled handmade pot scrubbers. “These would look great in a big wooden bowl,” she said, and bought them all. With five metal lime squeezers, they came to 195 pesos ($17.97 at 10.85 pesos to the dollar).
There’s a timelessness to Tonalá, but like any vibrant trading center, it reflects larger trends. While a few indigenous artisans from the surrounding mountains still come to sell their work, there has been a flood in recent years of cheap Chinese plastic ware. And globalization has even brought traditional crafts from elsewhere: Guatemalan work has been available here for centuries; now Balinese is as well.
We moved on to Avenida Tonalá, lined with workshops big enough to call themselves factories. Vast yards of pottery, stoneware and ironwork line the road, ready for buyers like Ms. Allen (who also has a store, Relics, in Abilene, Tex.) to order containerloads, or people like me doing a little Christmas shopping.
At El Nuevo Triangulo de Cristal (Avenida Tonalá 2858; 52-33-3681-4342; www.elnuevotriangulodecristal.com), a cinderblock building by the highway, we found the place crammed with handmade glass: the classic Mexican goblets and pitchers, rimmed with color; big orbs of glittery mercury glass; gaudy glass figurines. Ms. Allen went to work while I picked up a glass pitcher with green and blue polka dots (90 pesos) and a trio of mirrored mercury glass vases (170 pesos). I came across a big bin of glass droplets, and stuck in my hand. “I hate to say it,” said Ms. Allen coolly, “but you can get them cheaper at Wal-Mart.”
But they’re not made at Wal-Mart. Right next to the sun-sprayed showroom was the dark, Hephaestian source: a dim space with a glowering, hissing furnace in the center. Artisans rushed to and fro, carrying glowing blobs of molten glass on the ends of long metal tubes. In a hot, sweaty dance whose grace arose from deadly necessity, they worked fast and efficiently: dipping, blowing, rolling, molding, snipping, dousing, baking. “The next time someone at my store complains about a wineglass costing $9,” said Ms. Allen while watching a glass blower, his brow beaded in sweat, “I’m going to show them a picture of this guy.”
Our next stop was Rojo Antigûo (Avenida Tonalá 482-A) and its unnamed sister shop across the street. With open sides and dirt floors strewn with dusty, weathered antiques, the shops resemble 19th-century junkyards.
ROJO ANTIGÛO specializes in old wooden doors that Ms. Allen buys and sends to a carpenter to make benches, armoires and tables. Juan Guzmán Rojo, one of the three brothers who own the shops, combs the Mexican countryside for old ox carts, wagons and other rustic equipment, which he refurbishes and sells to collectors, hotels and restaurants. A century-old wagon goes for 4,300 pesos.
ON our way out, Ms. Allen bought Mr. Guzmán’s workbench for 700 pesos. He looked stunned. “They think I’m crazy,” she told me, “but this will look great shored up and waxed.”
I bought an antique metal stamp from a Guadalajara card club for 100 pesos. Ms. Allen told me I had overpaid. “She says I overpaid,” I told Mr. Guzmán. “No, not really,” he said. “It’s a very nice piece. I might have gone down to 80 pesos, but no more.”
The question of bargaining has always vexed me. It’s a subtle interaction that, done properly, leaves all parties satisfied. But when botched it can lead to bad feelings. I asked Abraham Rosales Casillas about it. Mr. Rosales owns a small shop in Tonalá where he sells traditional objets d’art, including his own work. “Usually you can talk things down 20 percent or so,” he told me. “Americans used to come and just buy things at the prices we listed, but about 15 years ago the guidebooks started to suggest bargaining. Now everyone wants to do it, so prices have adjusted.”
His store, Nocheztli (Francisco I. Madero 183, Centro; 52-33-3331-9634), brims with Huichol string paintings, naturally dyed Oaxacan wool rugs and popotillo mosaics. As I admired a Huichol beaded jaguar head (1,300 pesos) that Mr. Rosales said took the artist 15 days to make, Ms. Allen sorted through plastic sacks of milagros — the tiny metal body parts, animals and household items used to petition intercession from the saints. Bags of a thousand were 80 pesos.
Mr. Rosales specializes in Catrinas, the well-dressed female Day of the Dead skeletons (his papier-mâché versions range from five inches to five feet and 12 pesos to 1,900 pesos). Mexico’s artistic and folk traditions feed off one another: the Catrina, an early-20th-century satire of the inner life of the rich by José Guadeloupe Posada, has earned an association with Santa Muerte, the syncretic descendant of the Aztec goddess of death, Mictecacihuatl.
Back in Tlaquepaque, I caught up with Ms. Allen, back from a stonemasonry, in Adobe. The shop (Independencia 195-A; 52-33-3639-8954; www.adobemarthafigueroa.com.mx) features the best work from Tonalá, saving visitors the effort — but also the pleasure — of the hunt. We walked out into the pleasant night air. Mariachis played under the stars while locals lined up at a gordita stand famous for its salsa. In the main plaza children watched rapt as dancers in charro suits and China Poblana dresses pranced in front of the band shell. Couples sat on benches under the leafy trees. A pair of clowns waddled past, and Ms. Allen laughed out loud. “I love my job,” she said.
FROM NEAR AND SOMETIMES FROM FAR
GETTING THERE
Tlaquepaque and Tonolá are 30 minutes from the Guadalajara airport by taxi (about $30). Flights from New York to Guadalajara are available for around $425 round trip.
WHERE TO STAY
I stayed at the Quinta Don José in Tlaquepaque (Calle Reforma 139; 866-629-3753; www.quintadonjose.com). The hotel is comfortable, spacious, central and offers many useful services, including free shuttles to and from the airport, Wi-Fi and an unfailingly friendly English-speaking staff. After a day of serious shopping, lounge in the courtyard by the pool or at the bar and trade war stories with the other buyers. A standard room is $80.
GETTING AROUND
A taxi between the centers of Tlaquepaque and Tonolá is 70 pesos each way.
SHIPPING
Míriam López, a consolidator in Tlaquepaque, assembles and exports containerloads for clients like Ms. Allen. She can also process smaller shipments, handling all the customs forms and packing (52-33-3331-9357). |
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