Bambara Terra Cotta Wedding Vessel

A wedding needs a pot. In much of West Africa, a woman made it.

Pottery was women’s work, and vessels like this were made for the household and for the ceremonies that marked a marriage. This one, Bambara, Mali, 19th century, stands seventeen inches tall and just as wide. The globular body rises to a short collared neck, the upper half wrapped in raised bands of fine incised chevrons, zigzags and cross-hatching. A warm red slip colors the shoulder, deepens to smoky brown through the middle, and gives way to pale unslipped clay below, softly worn by handling.

It has been held by many hands. It has not been dropped.