La Chamba Catalogue
La Chamba Catalogue
Lovingly hand made for centuries in South America
La Chamba is well known throughout South America and is used in many top restaurants for preparing, cooking and serving traditional dishes. The origins of this cookware can be traced back over 700 years to vases and pitchers found in archeological sites.
La Chamba is still made in the traditional way, in a small village in the Andes, where the intensive manufacturing process is handed down from mother to daughter.
First the local black clay is mixed with sand and water and from that each piece is moulded, trimmed and smoothed by hand.
The vessels are coated in a fine terracotta glaze and are then left to dry in the sun.
After drying, the surface is rubbed and polished by hand with semi-precious stones. It is this intensive polishing that gives La Chamba its natural patina and sheen.
The cookware is placed inside large earthenware vessels and fired in kilns. This process changes the terracotta surface to black.
As you would expect, colours and shape variations are typical of a hand-crafted product.
