Lencan Culture

Rosa y Patricia at the San Matias Cooperative

Our pottery is made by women, in simple cooperatives that dot the hills of the beautiful Copan region of Western Honduras. A small percentage of our pottery also comes from the Valle de Angeles, a small artist community near the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

Lencan pottery in Honduras is important for many reasons. Among them:

-The design, construction, material gathering, firing, packing, and shipping of this pottery provides an important source of skilled employment in the rural areas of Honduras. Honduras is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere (Haiti is the first), and over 100,000 Lencan people live there. On a very basic level, your purchase allows these mountain people to live more comfortably and stay away from the low-paying factory jobs that have come to Honduras in the past fifteen years.

-Since it is principally a home-based business, this artistry helps women and mothers to remain at home with their children, in a country in which the public school system is closed an average of 1 out of every 2 schooldays.

The welcome sign at La Campa, one of our Cooperative towns

-It gives the indigenous Lencan people of Honduras a great sense of cultural identity, because they are providing the Global marketplace with the same beautiful, handmade pottery that they have been making for their own use, for hundreds of years.

-The entire process -- from clay accumulation, to wood collection for firing and smoke, to the manner in which the pieces are made -- is completely Earth-friendly. The indigenous Lencan people of Honduras have been crafting this pottery in the same way for hundreds of years, free of chemicals, dangerous runoff, factories, and acid rain-producing smoke.

By purchasing this pottery, you can rest assured that you are keeping an ancient art alive, supporting native Central American mothers and their families, and being kind to the Earth. And all of our hand-selected pottery was chosen to look unique and distinctive in your home or gallery. As an added psychic bonus during these tough economic times, you are providing financial support to a group of people that needs it most, as the flooding in Honduras this Fall has been extremely heavy, and planned giving is down substantially.