The last featured ceramic piece in my series on folk art in the Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection takes us back to the Americas--a holy water basin molded out of clay by Mexican Potter Moises Rodriguez from the ceramic-making center of Tonala, near Guadalajara. Rodriguez is known for his “burnished” pottery pieces. He uses a stone to polish and smooth away any pores in his molded clay art objects, before painting on his designs in natural pigments. Burnished pottery is fired at low temperatures, resulting in semi-sculptural works with a soft luster and muted colors, as we see in this holy water stoup with a ripple-edged rim depicting the popular Passion motif of Pieta, where the Virgin Mary cradles the body of Christ taken down from the Cross. Rodriguez offers an elaborately decorated folk art variation in contrasting colors on the traditional Spanish Baroque style in this new addition to the Mexican Figurative Pottery page in the Schools of Sacred Art section. (John Kohan)