The wooden dough bowl is a true representation of items used in a typical Native American home. In the northern part of Mexico, high in the mountain regions, the Tarahumara people have rugged lifestyles and live in modest dwellings. They earn money for food and basic necessary items by selling their handcrafts. I have always been impressed with the unique baskets, weavings, jewelry and other hand-made items created by this Tribe. It is very interesting that although the women are primarily in charge of making the handcrafts, the Tarahumara men enjoy working with wood and create beautiful pieces of art using crude instruments and tools. Like the wooden dough bowls, they also make wooden spoons, figurines and traditional game balls used in tribal foot races. These items made of wood have a simple, unpolished beauty, brought out by the characteristics of the wood.

You will also find it interesting how the traditional dough bowls are made. The fashioning of the wooden bowl is started by hand chiseling a piece of pine wood taken from a fallen tree trunk. Native American log bowls are made by dividing the trunk in half and then roughly chopping it with an axe. The wood is then fashioned into a bowl shape with a machete or large knife, giving it that unique, rough and primitive look. This unique style is the same way that all dough bowls have been fashioned throughout the Sierra Madre for centuries.

As you learn about these intriguing Indigenous people, you will learn that the wooden dough bowl has an important part in the Tarahumara household. It is used in the process of hand-grinding corn and wheat to make hand-made tortillas, an essential part to the Tarahumara diet. They then begin by crushing the kernels into a stone bowl called a metate. The dough bowl is used to catch the flour at one end of the metate as it is ground. Water is then mixed with the flour in the bowl and tortillas are made by hand from the mix. Although still used by the Tarahumara Indians for making tortillas and other cooking purposes, today dough bowls are offered to the public for Native American style home decorating and as Indian art for collecting.

You can use dough bowls for various things. They work wonderfully as collectibles, fruit bowls, and when combined with home decorating items. They are also wonderful when used for art projects when a blank canvas is needed for western style paintings and other Native American style artwork. Dough bowls, painted with cowboy and western scenes, are very unique and are a wonderful way to add western style in your interior design. A painted dough bowl makes a unique focal point for any country style room, cabin, lodge or ranch style home by adding the rich warm colors typical of southwestern art.

You can buy log dough bowls online and in various stores that sell rustic and Native American style home decorating products. It is easy to create genuine Native style in your home, or to give your room an authentic rustic look by including a rustic, painted dough bowl along with your decor. If you like the unique traditions and American Indian values, you will love displaying a piece of their amazing artwork as part of your home decorating. To bring true Native style design to your home and produce a look that is truly one of a kind, use a genuine native style wooden dough bowl to bring great character to your home decor.