Alice Chéverez

Alice Chéverez, of Morovis, Puerto Rico, and her family are regarded as direct descendants of Taino Indians, the indigenous people of Puerto Rico. In the 1980s they came to the attention of archaeologist and master potter Daniel Silva, who one day visited the family's home in Morovis asking for a drink of water while he was on an archaeological excavation. He taught Alice the techniques used by indigenous potters and since then she and her sister and mother have been creating replicas in their studio. Taino pottery was originally made by women for domestic and ceremonial uses. The pottery wheel was unknown; instead the Taino used the coiling method, where the object was modeled by rolling and stacking thin coils of clay and blending them together with the fingers. Many objects took the shape of animals, like frogs and turtles. Taino decoration is mostly geometric, consisting of parallel lines, dots and circles. The finished piece was polished with smooth pieces of gourd, allowed to dry and fired in a bonfire, a process that even today can take hours.