A huge amount of pottery gets made in Mexico. Most of it is quite good but numbingly similar as you trudge from gallery to gallery in Delores Hidalgo. So it's always a great pleasure to find an outstanding potter.

Ernesto Bernardino Morales Garcia has a studio in Tzintzuntzan.

To find him, you enter the courtyard of the Monastery of Santa Ana and walk through the ancient olive grove until the monastery buildings rise up before you. You then turn right and walk to a small, dilapidated building toward the right rear of the lot.

No signs tell you that you've found the studio. Peering through a sagging wooden door, you see a dim, mussy space. If you spot a kiln, you're in the right place.

I told Ernesto the English word, "kiln", and asked what the Spanish word was. He looked at me like I was an idiot and said "horno".

Of course. Oven. How stupid of me.

Ernesto is carrying on in his father's footsteps. The two make pottery primarily for export to fine craft galleries in the U. S. They have no Mexican outlets, and none of the work in the Tzintzuntzan workshop is what you would call displayed. A dank cave lit by a single naked light bulb hanging from the ceiling has finished work stored on rough plank shelves. Ernesto will sell you some of it if you ask nicely.

The two potters do a lot of commission work, like this set of large faces, each more than two feet tall.

Decorative glaze patterns are applied freehand, with small brushes.

Jean unearthed a few pieces. A former craft gallery owner, she inspects the work with her sharp eye.

Nothing tempts Jean like pottery. A few interesting and unique pieces came home with us.

My friend Clint sniffed out this workshop. How he found it I'll never know. But it's fun to visit places off the beaten path, places that are not part of the masses of aggressive vendors lined up along the main drags, all selling charmless, commonplace items.