Cerámica de Cotoca; the potters are called loceras
A hand-building pottery tradition from Cotoca, near Santa Cruz de la Sierra, in which women potters (loceras) build vessels and figurative sculpture entirely from coils of clay without a wheel or mold, drawing on local pre-Columbian ceramic forms. Facing declining demand for traditional utilitarian ware by the early 1980s, the technique was deliberately redirected from 1983 through CIDAC toward sculptural forms — figurative birds, women depicted in traditional occupations, and large-format decorative vessels — with named artists Consuelo Saavedra and Olga Ribera credited among the contributors to this creative redirection, and international technical exchange (Japanese and Argentine ceramicists) supporting glaze and firing technique.
Risk level: Vulnerable · Not inscribed; Bolivia is a State Party to the 2003 ICH Convention
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