If you’ve ever bought a piece of pottery from Mexico By Hand and received a personal message from me asking how your order arrived…here’s why. We are emotionally invested in every piece we buy from Mexican artisans, so it’s a fulfillment of our vision and intent to get the pieces to you, and for it to be a great experience. Everything we bring in from Mexico is packed by us (Doug and me) and that takes a lot of doing right there. Over the years, acquiring packing material has been really challenging, believe or not. We’ve spent hours going to stores in Patzcuaro asking if they had any cardboard boxes we could have or buy. They were very scarce, not strong, and sometimes smelled of detergent—not my favorite. Doug took this photo of me because I was SO excited we finally found a large box to ship an order to New York. It was not easy in those days.
I’m happy to say the situation is getting much better. We can find bubble wrap at an amazing hardware/stationery store a few blocks away from where we stay, and this year we ordered cardboard boxes in bulk from an online store called Mercado Libre. Similar to Amazon service, they arrived the next day!
We spent hours repacking the merchandise we picked up from the artisans and crossed our fingers it would arrive safely. This year we went with a shipping company that we used two years ago, and our 30 boxes arrived at our driveway without any breakage. Well, there was one clay Catrina whose hand broke off, but that’s easily fixable, so honestly, it’s not even worth mentioning.
But then, when a customer orders something that needs to be sent from California to a home in the U.S. we have to carefully repack the item to protect it from the shippers here who frankly don’t care about our fragile pottery art. I am always in search of boxes for all the different sizes and shapes of our art, trying to avoid spending a lot of money that will only cause me to raise our prices. Most pottery we pack in a box inside a box for the most protection, and sometimes Doug needs to get creative and make a box. After USPS or UPS gets it, I anxiously wait to hear from customers that their packages arrived safely, and we celebrate every victory. That was especially true this year when I had to send three precious (and costly) vases from Capula. You might have seen my Facebook message offering the award-winning pieces below for sale at the end of our trip in July.
I sold all three within 24 hours (amazing!) and paid the happy artisans. We packed them SO carefully, and two weeks later, as we unpacked our pallet of boxes after they arrived in Berkeley, we held our breath. The first ones we opened were the three with the special vases--and we discovered they had made it just fine. Then we had to carefully repack one in a box for Pennsylvania, one for Florida, and another to Virginia. For several days I anxiously waited to hear from all three customers. They all arrived in perfect condition. Victory!
These vases have gone to new homes, but there are many other beautiful pieces from Capula by Fernando and his wife Belem, as well as the Gonzalez-Ayala workshop. You can see them in our TABLETOP collection. https://mexico-by-hand.myshopify.com/collections/tabletop-pottery