The First Taíno Horsehair Pottery: Kacian's Story

Kacian Calderon has been making pottery for about 25 years, and in that time, he's done something no one else in the Taíno movement has done before him. He is the first to bring the horsehair pottery technique into Taíno ceramics.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Kacian got involved in the Taíno movement in the 1980s. Although pottery wasn't something he grew up doing, it was a dream he carried inside for years before the opportunity finally came.

》Finding His Way to Clay

Kacian's path to pottery started with a reconnection. He had met a Taíno woman years earlier in New York, and when their paths crossed again, she was living in Borikén and invited him to a free pottery class. That class opened a door, not only for him to connect with a traditional craft and calling, but to move back to our ancestral land in Borikén, where he would fall in love with both and never look back!

Not long after, he learned about Alicia Cheverez, a fully traditional Taíno potter, and decided to write her a letter. She reached out and offered to teach him directly. Over time he grew close to her family, learning the craft from someone rooted in our ancestral ways. Eventually he ventured out on his own, beginning what would become a lifelong practice.

He speaks about the work with real conviction, describing himself as a modern Taíno artist carrying tradition forward into the present.

》How Horsehair Pottery Came to Be

The horsehair technique itself has roots in Western Indigenous pottery traditions. Kacian explains that pottery in general was traditionally the work of women, who were also the keepers of agriculture. That's how they learned to use fruits and herbs as natural coloring in the work.

The horsehair technique's origin, as he tells it, was something of an accident. A woman's hair fell onto a piece of hot pottery and burned onto the surface, leaving a mark. From there, indigenous potters began using horsehair intentionally rather than by chance.

》The Process of Getting It Right

The clay he works with is raku, a type that contains sand. Each piece has to be buffed three times, then bisque fired before the horsehair technique can even begin.

Perfecting the method wasn't a straight path. Kacian found conflicting recommendations on firing temperature from different sources, and it took a long process of trial and error to land on what actually worked.

"The temperature is very important because if it's too hot the hair will disintegrate and doesn't make a mark, if it's too cool it will just roll off."

Kacian uses a pyrometer to track the exact temperature of the pot as it heats, since so much of the technique depends on precision. Once a piece comes out of the kiln, you're working against the clock as it begins to cool down quickly. He places the pieces on a metal rack while everything is still extremely hot, moving fast before the moment passes.

Once the piece survives that window, it gets buffed with beeswax rather than glazed. Glazing, he explains, would make the entire design disappear. Because of the process involved, all raku pieces made this way are decorative rather than functional.

》Looking Ahead

In Puerto Rico, becoming a working potter requires an artisan license, and once licensed, an artisan officially represents Puerto Rican culture through their work. Kacian currently teaches classes for only $25 each, open to anyone in the community ready to learn.

The skills he's built over decades of dedication and patient experimentation are his to share, and he's open to passing them on to the next person who's ready to pick it up. As the first to bring horsehair pottery into the Taíno tradition, Kacian is laying the groundwork for something the community is only just beginning to discover, and there's a real opportunity for that legacy to grow with whoever steps up next.

》Want to learn pottery from Kacian, or connect with him directly?

Follow him on IG @taller_cipey