From Amazing Artists to a Sköl Viking Bar?! Aaron Finds His People | El Carmen de Viboral, Colombia

El Carmen de Viboral sits up in the hills of eastern Antioquia, about 34 miles from Medellín and over 7,000 feet up, and pretty much everything in this town comes back to clay. The streets are lined with hand-painted ceramics, the storefronts are decorated in it, and the whole place has been making pottery for over 125 years. I came for a day and ended up staying an extra night. Found my people here, I think. Artists, makers, a guy running a Viking bar. Yeah. How El Carmen became the pottery town of Colombia: the hills around here are loaded with feldspar and quartz, the minerals you need to make ceramic. In 1898 a man named Eliseo Pareja started the town's first ceramics business, Locería del Carmen, and other factories followed. By the 1930s through the 1950s, dishes made in El Carmen de Viboral were all over Colombia. A national ceramics school opened here in 1945. Around 1970, hand painting took off, the colorful flowers and plants on white clay this town is known for now, every piece painted by hand so no two come out alike. Cheap imports hit the industry hard in the 1980s, but the town hung on, and today El Carmen's ceramics are recognized as part of Colombia's cultural heritage. There's even a ceramics museum. The pottery studio: Cerámicas El Dorado was founded in 1966 by Pedro Antonio Bello and Fabiola Rendón, who raised nine kids that kept the tradition going. It started in their backyard, making stoneware cups, decorative pieces, and the grinding balls and cobblestones for the mills that crush the minerals into clay. Around 1979, one of their customers sold them a 1977 Dodge truck, and they paid for it with pottery. That truck is still sitting out front. Miss Gladys gave me the whole tour: how they slip-cast cups in plaster molds (about 20 minutes to form a wall roughly 6 millimeters thick, then four hours before it'll come out of the mold), trimming and smoothing everything by hand, about eight days of drying on the shelves, the first firing into bisque, painting, glazing, and the second firing. She also showed me the huge old kiln that used to fire 1,000 to 2,000 pieces at a time, before the environmental rules shut it down. They fire with gas now. And she says they have the region's denomination of origin, because they do every step themselves, start to finish. If you want to see real handmade Colombian pottery, this is it. Then the Viking bar. Got a cheaper room for the night overlooking the main park, about $45, the town square full of artists and live music, and went looking for a beer. Found Sköl Bar Vikingo. A Viking bar. In Colombia. They serve beer in drinking horns. So what happens when a six-foot-one gringo with braids and a beard, who already kind of looks like a Hollywood Viking, walks into a Viking bar in the Colombian mountains? Watch and find out. Spoiler: the owner gave me his WhatsApp number at the end of the night and told me if I ever need anything in Colombia, just ask. That's been my experience with Colombians pretty much everywhere. Not many small towns back home would bother paving their streets with brick. They take a lot of pride in their towns down here, and El Carmen shows it. Next stop, Guatapé. Sköl Bar Vikingo: Carrera 31 #53-25, El Carmen de Viboral, Instagram @skolbarvikingo New here? I'm Aaron — an artist and content creator from the mountains of Western North Carolina, a veteran, medically retired after fifteen years. This fall, me and my dog Copper are packing up the shop and trading the Blue Ridge for Colombia — and I'm documenting every step of the journey right here: the art, the move, the wins, and the screwups. 🌎 The blog — the full story, written out: https://www.appalachianeclectic.com/ 🔔 Subscribe — two videos a week, plus weekly live Q&As:    / @appalachianeclectic   📘 Facebook — Aaron's Appalachian Eclectic:   / 1byurykm1s   🛒 The art that pays for all this: https://www.appalachianeclectic.com/g... #appalachian #woodworking #handmade #artist #colombia #expat #maker #TheAdventureBegins