African Pottery

A compound in the Sahel, a woman, a pile of clay and a fire made of grass. No wheel. No kiln. Only practice.

African pottery and terra cotta are coil-built and open-fired by hand. Zulu ukhamba beer vessels from South Africa, burnished black and twice fired, served sorghum beer to the ancestors. Azande medicine pots from the Congo and South Sudan, often with human heads at the neck, held a healer’s potions. Nok terra cotta from Nigeria, some two thousand years old, was built hollow from clay mixed with gravel. Djenne terra cotta from Mali’s inland Niger Delta and figurative vessels from Cameroon and the Congo join large storage and water jars from Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad.

Women potters across much of the continent shaped and fired these forms; the surfaces carry smoke clouds, burnish and slip.

Stone’s quiet presence, with a little more warmth.