earthy decor

Inspired by the mixture of pre-Hispanic cultures that characterizes Nicaragua, Arlen Estrada designs a stunning decorative vase to add to your home decor. The round vase is handcrafted of ceramic in earth tones, and features the image of two figures in relief holding hands. This design is repeated on the reverse side. The vase stands atop a hollow base with beautiful cutwork. Says Estrada, "I love crafting these pieces, since they have a touch of Nicaraguan ceramics, and they show scenes of our ancestors from their daily lives."

Artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association handcraft a ceramic replica of an Aztec calendar that will make an intriguing conversation piece wherever it is displayed. A replica of the Piedra del Sol, the "sun stone," found in the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City, the images in the calendar represent the legend of the fifth sun. According to Mesoamerican cosmology, there were four suns before our current sun, all destroyed, along with the people of the time, by the wrath of the gods. Faithful to the original, the replica is full of intricate detail and painted in warm, earthy orange, red, green, and beige. A sueded leather cord makes a loop at the top for easy hanging.

Coyolxauhqui, the Aztec moon goddess, appears in this elegant museum replica by artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association. Discovered beneath the plaza in Mexico City, the low relief sculpture dates from the 1400s and tells the story of the deity known as "Golden Bells." Her mother Coatlicue, the earth goddess, was defiled when a ball of feathers fell into the temple. Thus Coyolxauhqui encouraged her 400 brothers and sisters to kill their mother, but the sun god Huitzilopochtli sprang from his mother's body as a fully armed adult and saved her. He cut off his sister's head and threw it into the sky, where it became the moon.

A skeletal figure, she stands with her hands raised in the posture of women who die in childbirth. Artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association sculpts the image of Coatlicue, "She of the serpent skirt." The Mexica earth goddess and mother of the gods, her image bears the symbol "Eight Malinalli, or "grass." Her son Huitzilopochtli, the sun god and god of war, defended her from the powers of the night.

The artisans bathe the image in earth to give it the effect of a recent archaeological discovery.

Angel Cerón honors Tlaloc, god of earthly waters and fertility, with a handcrafted ceramic figurine. The people from the Teotihuacán culture believed him to be responsible for drought as well as for floods. This belief spread throughout Mexico, reaching the Maya who referred to him as Chaac, and from there to Central American cultures.

A skeletal figure, she stands with her hands raised in the posture of women who die in childbirth. Artisans from the Angel Cerón Artisan Association sculpt the image of Coatlicue, "She of the serpent skirt." The Mexica earth goddess and mother of the gods, her image bears the symbol "Eight Malinalli, or "grass." Her son Huitzilopochtli, the sun god and god of war, defended her from the powers of the night.