LXIX
AN ALFARERÍA OR POTTER'S YARD
(Granada)
This porous pottery for keeping water cool had been imported from America, and was chiefly made in Andalusia, Portugal, and Extremadura. It is still produced at Andujar and elsewhere. Nearly all travellers in Spain describe it, and insist upon the curious circumstance that it was eaten by the Spanish women. “I have mentioned elsewhere,” wrote Countess d'Aulnoy, “the longing many women feel to chew this clay, which often obstructs their bodies internally. Their stomachs swell, and grow as hard as stone, while their skin turns yellow as a quince. I also felt a curiosity to taste this ware, that is so highly yet so undeservedly esteemed; but I would devour a grindstone rather than put it in my mouth again. Nevertheless, if one wants to be agreeable to the Spanish ladies, one has to present them with some bucaros, which they themselves call barros, and which, as many deem, possess such numerous and admirable qualities, since they claim for the clay that it cures sickness, and that a drinking vessel made of it betrays the presence of a poison. I possess one which spoils the taste of wine, but greatly improves water. This liquid seems to boil and tremble when it is thrown into the cup in question; but after a little while the vessel empties—so porous is the clay of which it is composed—and then it has a fragrant odour.”
Similar accounts are given by travellers of a later time. “I wish,” wrote Swinburne, “I could contrive a method of carrying you some of the fine earthen jars, called buxaros, which are made in Andalusia. They are remarkably convenient for water-drinkers, as they are light, smooth, and handy; being not more than half-baked, they are very porous, and the outside is kept moist by the water's filtering through; though placed in the sun, the water in the pots remains as cold as ice. The most disagreeable circumstance attending them is, that they emit a smell of earth refreshed by a sudden shower after a long drought.”[92]
Laborde, who wrote a few years later, seems to have copied some of his information from Bowles. “The Murcians,” he said, “use in their houses little jars called Bucaros, the same as those which in some parts of Andalusia are called Alcarrazas.[93] They have handles open at the top, are smaller at the bottom than above, and bulge in the middle; they are slight, porous, smooth, and half-baked; they are made of a peculiar kind of clay. When water is put into them, they emit a smell like that sent up by the earth after a shower of rain in summer. The water makes its way very slowly through the pores, and keeps them constantly moist on the outside; they are used to cool water for drinking. The windows and balconies of all the houses have large iron rings, with a flat surface, on which they are placed at night, and the water, oozing incessantly, becomes very cool.[94] In Andalusia some of these jars are white, and others red; in Murcia they have only white ones. They appear to be in every respect of the same nature as the evaporating vases of Africa, Egypt, Syria, and India, of which so much has been said by travellers, and on which the learned have made so many dissertations.”
The same vessels are noticed by Ford in his description of a Spanish posada. “Near the staircase downstairs, and always in a visible place, is a gibbous jar, tinaja, of the ancient classical amphora shape, filled with fresh water; and by it is a tin or copper utensil to take water out with, and often a row of small pipkins, made of a red porous clay,[95] which are kept ready filled with water, on, or rather in, a shelf fixed to the wall, and called la tallada, el taller. These pots, alcarrazas, from the constant evaporation, keep the water extremely cool. They are of various shapes, many, especially in Valencia and Andalusia, being of the unchanged identical form of those similar clay drinking-vessels discovered at Pompeii. They are the precise trulla. Martial speaks both of the colour and the material of those made at Saguntum, where they still are prepared in great quantities; they are not unlike the ckool'lehs of Egypt, which are made of the same material and for the same purposes, and represent the ancient Canobic κστατικα. They are seldom destined to be placed on the table; their bottoms being pointed and conical, they could not stand upright. This singular form was given to the vasa futilia, or cups used at the sacrifices of Vesta, which would have been defiled had they touched the ground. As soon, therefore, as they are drunk off, they are refilled and replaced in their holes on the shelf, as is done with decanters in our butlers' pantries.”[96]
I am only aware of one author who derides the statement that this porous clay was eaten by the Spanish women. According to Bowles, who certainly describes and comments on it with intelligence and scholarship, the neighbourhood of Andujar contains “large quantities of the white argil of which are made the jars or alcarrazas which serve in many parts of Spain for cooling water in the summer-time. In other parts of Andalusia is found a red variety of this clay, employed in making the vessels known as búcaros, which serve to freshen the water as well as for drinking it out of—a thing the Spanish ladies love greatly. Both the white alcarrazas and the búcaros as red as the blood of a bull are thin, porous, smooth, and half-baked. When filled with water they emit a pleasant smell like that of dry earth rained upon in summer, and as the water filters through the outer surface, remain continually damp.” The same writer adds that at that time (1752) the búcaros proceeding from the Indies were of finer workmanship, and had a more agreeable smell than those of Spanish manufacture. “In the Encyclopædia,” he continues, “and in the Dictionary of Natural History, we read that Spanish ladies are for ever chewing búcaro, and that the hardest penance their confessors can inflict upon them is to deprive them for a single day of this enjoyment.” Bowles, however, quotes these observations in a scornful tone, and deprecates the habit of “believing writers who without inquiring into things, concoct and publish novels to divert the populace and rid them of their money.”
Turning our attention once again to the finer kinds of Talavera ware, Gestoso adduces proofs that this as well as Chinese porcelain was faultlessly and freely imitated in the potteries of Seville. Here, therefore, is a source of fresh confusion; and probably a great proportion of the polychrome ware which goes by the name of Talaveran is really of Sevillian origin. It is further known that at one period, which seems to begin with the second half of the sixteenth century, potters who were natives of Talavera were hired to work in Seville.
