Pomaire

This guide to Pomaire near Santiago follows the coil method its potters have used for centuries, a Mapuche technique practiced long before any Spaniard reached the valley, building a pot's wall strip by strip with nothing but bare hands and local clay. It traces how the craft became a whole town's living through one couple, Juan Bautista Salinas and his wife Remigia Castro Montana, who around 1853 began urging neighbours to make more pottery than any household needed and hauled it by ox cart to a Valparaiso market before Christmas. You'll also meet Teresa Muñoz, born here in 1915, who started shaping pots at sixteen and worked the same patterns for the rest of her life.