08.29.26 Javier Martinez

Javier Martinez and the
Living Clay of Mata Ortiz

Chimayo Trading Staff Report | August 2026

In the small village of Mata Ortiz, Chihuahua, Hector Javier Martinez has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Mexican ceramics. Born in 1984, he spent years working as a mechanic and gardener before turning fully to pottery.

We’ve been anticipating the arrival of this very large and fabulously detailed olla from Javier Martinez of Mata Ortiz for over a year. Javier’s artwork on this piece documents some of the fascinating history of Mata Ortiz in his delightful and memorial style.

12.5″ x 10.5″
$5800

Around 2008 he began developing a bold black-and-white sgraffito style centered on Day of the Dead and Night of the Dead imagery. The approach quickly set him apart. Working closely with his wife, Gabriela Perez de Martinez, he refined intricate cemetery scenes, skeletal figures, ravens, and geometric borders that feel both rooted in Mexican tradition and strikingly modern.

Recognition followed. In 2013 he took a first-place award at the Concurso Cerámica de Mata Ortiz. The next year a large black-on-white olla featuring Mexico City landmarks and Night of the Dead motifs earned the Presidential Award at the Premio Nacional de la Cerámica in Tlaquepaque.

Since then the couple has expanded into polychrome pieces, shallow bowls, and plates while continuing to explore new backgrounds such as Paris, Venice, Santa Fe, and New York… always returning to the interplay of life, death, and memory that defines their signature work.

Mata Ortiz itself carries a layered history that helps explain how a remote village became an international center for ceramics. The town was founded in 1909 as Estación Pearson, named for American engineer Frederick Stark Pearson, whose Mexico North Western Railway Company built a rail line to support a massive lumber mill in the Sierra Madre.

The railroad connected the area to Ciudad Juárez and beyond, turning the settlement into a commercial hub for timber and goods. When the mill closed in the early 1920s and the rail workshops later moved to Nuevo Casas Grandes, formal employment largely disappeared.

6.5″ x 4″
$330

In 1924 the town was renamed Juan Mata Ortiz in honor of a local figure, part of a broader nationalist renaming under President Plutarco Elías Calles. Nearby stands the Hacienda de San Diego, once belonging to Luis Terrazas, one of Chihuahua’s most powerful landowners. Built in the early 1900s, the hacienda was more than a ranch; in March 1911, after the Battle of Casas Grandes, revolutionary forces regrouped there and named Francisco I. Madero provisional president of Mexico. The site remains a tangible link to the region’s turbulent past.

9.75″ x 6.75″
$900

Javier Martinez has left a lasting mark on Mata Ortiz pottery by transforming the traditional craft into something deeply personal and instantly recognizable. Through his precise, finely executed sgraffito, he brings Day of the Dead and Night of the Dead imagery to life with remarkable clarity and emotional depth, turning each vessel into a quiet conversation between the living and the remembered.

7.5″ x 6″
$600

Working alongside his wife Gabriela, Javier has expanded the visual language of the village while remaining rooted in its clay and its history. In doing so, he has helped carry Mata Ortiz pottery forward, not only as a revival of ancient techniques, but as a living art form capable of speaking to collectors and admirers around the world.

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Ranchos de Taos, NM 87557

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