I found this photo of Doña Rosa Real Mateo de Nieto (1900-1980) and her son, Don Valente Pánfilo Nieto (1930-2010) in their pottery studio on Benito Juarez Street in San Bartolo Coyotepec, on a page dedicated to Don Valente (
www.donvalente.com.mx), taken at about the time I visited with them in the early 1970s. She brought the concept of black pottery (barro negro) using the iron oxide occurring naturally in the local clay and adding a reduction period to the firing to San Bartolo Coyotepec in the 1950s, adding “bruñido” - burnishing the clay to a high polish using polished agate stones - to some pottery to give it a high luster gunmetal grey-black. All the pottery is shaped by hand using an improvised potter’s “wheel” made of an inverted saucer serving as a base for another saucer, the actual “wheel”, turned entirely manually.
That’s how they remain in my mind and in my heart.