Mata Ortiz is also known as Casas Grandes pottery, though this name sometimes causes confusion with its' prehistoric precursor. This new art is not a copying of the old but a creative departure with it's own integrity.

Along the Palanganas River near the ancient ruins of Casas Grandes, in what is today northern Chihuahua, Mexico, a local vaquero and self-taught potter named Juan Quezada founded a native art movement inspired by traditions that had died out around the time of the Spanish conquest. Surrounded by a sea of pottery fragments from these ancient ones, this one man began to experiment with the same raw materials available to his predecessors. With no input from the outside world, by trial and error alone, he taught himself and eventually inspired the ancient craft. Then he taught his own extended family members and any neighbor that cared to learn.

They had discovered how to pinch and coil clay to near perfect symmetry, how to burnish with hard stones to a high polish, how to craft the finest brushes from human hair, and how to make and then fire clays in the open air. Formed and painted entirely by hand using only local materials and without benefit of a potter's wheel or kiln their works reach artistic heights rarely seen before.

This spectacular achievement accomplished only since the 1970's has been widely publicized and featured in exhibitions and museums around the world. It has set new standards of quality for hand-built pottery. Today nearly 300 Mata Ortiz potters are producing this fine craft. Some are creating one-of-a-kind pieces that can only be called works of art. From these humble origins emerge new possibilities for contemporary design that are inspired by and aesthetic whose roots reach back a thousand years.