¬ I get lost, from time to time, wondering about my ancestors and all the things that have been built up from their time to now, and those that no longer remain. Things that have been forgotten like a feral adobe exposed to the elements. Times there are semblances of objects or memories that give me more info and paint a picture better. Sometimes it's just a curiosity that may never be fully understood.
I feel that my ancestors far enough back lived underground, in something like what we know of today as kivas. It seems to me, that maybe they’re seen as the sacred spaces because they were once our homes.
Regardless of that being true or not, the people I come from have been living from and in the earth they were on for centuries. One of the ways that has lasted and is still present current day is the use of making mud bricks (adobes). The history goes that the Spanish had brought the technique of forming the mud brick to the new world, something they gleaned while the moorish occupied Spain. Though the adobe is an original a ‘Spanish’ practice, many of the ruins pre-contact are made solely of stone - the practice of building with mud is timeless.
With the practices and ways of life and sheltering it that have been lost, the adobe remains. The smell of dry dirt, sifted and soaking with water to soon become a brick is still one of my favorite smells. It reminds me of the mud plaster and dirt roof at my grandfathers house after a rain, or witnessing my father build his own home of mud while I skateboarded around the concrete foundations. Being a child playing in fresh mud, or the taste of bread baked in a mud oven with a mud floor (horno).
Despite the countless memories and feelings mud of northern New Mexico bring to me, it's hard to overlook how beautiful this practice of building shelter of the earth is. Especially when that earth was shaped with your hands, each component set with intention.
Traditionally, while building an adobe home one would use the materials present in their location. Making their own bricks and plaster from what ever soil was present. In the village we live in if you look at each home with adobes exposed each one is different. Some have lots of rocks, some with sharper corners being mostly clay and lots of straw or wheat shaft, some with round edges and full of sand. Some of dark soil some of light, some with charcoal chunks.
It could be argued that there is such a thing as a perfect adobe and that that should be the standard for building, but isn’t it endlessly more beautiful to think that each home could be made of the unique qualities of the specific terrain they are on. The same goes for the plaster, if the dirt was red and the mountains that surround it, so would be the house.
I could wax on about aesthetic qualities and the feeling that mud structures bring me, but at the end of it all it's also extremely practical.
Mud breaths, allowing air to flow in and out, providing clean air flow. Being made of mostly clay, adobes are fireproof, biodegradable, non toxic, and remotely water resistant. If the walls are built thick enough the biomass will keep the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter with south facing windows/fireplace, while also providing sound proofing and blocking emfs. Most of all though, mud bricks are something anyone can make and the things built from them become an extension of ourselves. At Taos Pueblo, each horno is talked about as feminine and in a way that intimacy with your horno is imperative as they are all unique and need specific love.
The bricks we are making in the photos are made all by hand of mud from the terrain we inhabit of northern New Mexico, with straw, and water, dried in the sun. I’m not at the point of building a structure quite yet, so we have been making two sizes and one will soon become the horno and the other larger brick will be used for our courtyard wall of our future dinner space. The bricks with indents are from our house lambs who love to jump all over the fresh bricks.
I'm proud each time I lift the frame from a batch of bricks and the bricks comes out smooth, honored to be able to take part of such a special practice the is intertwined with who and where I am from.
ADOBE SIZES
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TRADTIONAL HORNO - 4" x 5" x 7"
STANDARD - 4” x 10" x 14"