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...that one pot looks just like another, to the insider each vessel bears the unmistakable imprint of its maker. "Each potter has her own hand" explains Namsifueli Nyeki, "each potter's village has its own style:" (1) But even to the untrained eye, the unique pottery of Namsifueli herself (FIG. 1) clearly stands out from other potters. Although her work is grounded in the long-standing pottery traditions of her ancestors, Namsifueli's interest in experimentation, new designs, and individualized detailing lend her work (FIG. 2) the distinct touch of an artist unconstrained by the limitations of mila, or cultural tradition. (2) As such, she poses an interesting contradiction to notions of anonymity, conformity, and conservatism in African pottery. This essay therefore follows in the footsteps of important, though infrequent, studies conducted from the 1950s to 1970s on individual potters, which introduced notions of individuality and authorship in African ceramics and the names of African potters with clearly recognizable styles--specifically Voania Muba, Abatan, and Ladi Kwali--into mainstream African art history. (3)
[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]
IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUALITY IN AFRICAN POTTERY
Albert Maesen used formal analysis to identify a group of vessels collected in the late nineteenth century for the Musee Royal de l'Afrique Central in Tervuren as the work of a single artist, a male potter called Voania from the village of Muba in the Belgian Congo. Through Maesen's brief treatise on the artist (1951) and the museum's promotion of his unusual figurative pots--which were highly atypical for the region--Voania Muba was quickly propelled to "master" status in the West. However, as subsequent fieldwork in Muba by Zdenka Volavka revealed, Voania made his vessels exclusively for foreign consumption and was neither known locally as a potter of significance nor celebrated among his peers and neighbors for his work (1979:59). He was essentially a "master" only in the eyes of Western viewers and collectors, by virtue of his unusual and imaginative appropriation and transformation of traditional ceramics into sculptural forms and by signing his pots in European fashion.
Robert Farris Thompson (1969) described the work of the Egbado Yoruba potter Abatan Odefunke Ayinke Ija of Oke-Odan in Nigeria. Specifically, Thompson examined Abatan's development of various stylistic phases in the making of ritual pottery for Eyinle, or awo ota eyinle, and the impact that Yoruba tradition and philosophy had upon her individuality and creativity. Unlike Voania Muba, Abatan led a prestigious life as a highly regarded potter, mud sculptor, praise poet, and dancer. Using the very subtle injection of new forms and ideas into older paradigms, Abatan's pottery, according to Thompson, was clearly "embedded in culture and yet [was] autonomous" (1969:121). In Abatan's case, creativity clearly was empowered by internal cultural forces that enabled her to negotiate her own artistic style and identity within acceptable boundaries of Yoruba culture.
Michael Cardew worked with the Gwari potter Ladi Kwali from Abuja in Nigeria. His autobiographical writings (1969, 1972) about the Abuja Pottery Training Centre that he helped to launch in 1952, and his work specifically with Ladi Kwali, provide an interesting case study that reveals how multiple forces can propel a potter's eminence beyond the local context. Prior to joining Cardew at Abuja, Ladi Kwali worked within the established canon of Gwari pottery techniques and forms and was already recognized regionally as a gifted and eminent potter. Cardew was introduced to her work in 1950 while visiting the Emir of Abuja, who had "a magnificent collection of pottery" including many works by Ladi Kwali (1972:34). Despite her initial reluctance to experiment with the technologies of wheel throwing, glazes, stoneware, and kiln firing that Cardew introduced at Abuja, Ladi Kwali eventually joined the pottery group a few years later. Once there, she displayed a strong sense of creativity, innovation, and experimentation that Cardew attributed to her familiarity, as a seasoned and highly capable potter, with the medium of clay. Working in the Abuja center, Ladi Kwali adapted her own recognizable style of surface decoration--already apparent before her encounter with Cardew--to the new technical media, which resulted in a fusion of the Gwari tradition of hand-built water pots with Western technology. In this marriage between tradition and change, she created high-fired glazed stoneware inscribed with sgraffito designs of stylized animals, for which she received international recognition through Cardew's promotion of her work in Europe and America.
These case studies of three artists from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century call attention to the importance of understanding the internal and external cultural forces that influence a potter's individuality and creativity and her identification as a great artist. In examining the work of Namsifueli Nyeki and the development of her reputation as an accomplished and celebrated potter--constructed within and outside of her local context--I will focus on the personal, professional, cultural, and historical processes that have helped to distinguish her sense of individuality as a potter and as a person.
NAMSIFUELI NYEKI: A PARE POTTER IN THE USAMBARA MOUNTAINS
In 1997, during one of my visits to a local market in Lushoto District (FIG. 3), I was fascinated by a group of women who drove some of the hardest bargains for their earthenware. These were the potters of Kileti, whose work was locally considered to be the best. Of all the Kileti potters, the name of Namsifueli Nyeki evoked the highest regard; she was celebrated as the most accomplished and innovative potter in the Usambara Mountains. For Namsifueli and her potting neighbors from Kileti, selling their vessels in the main market town of Lushoto meant a four-hour trek carrying a heavy load of pots along narrow pathways that weave up and down the valleys and peaks of this mountainous terrain. The trek had its price, both for the potters who regularly walked to Lushoto to sell their wares and for the patrons, who consequently paid more for their pots.
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]
When I first met Namsifueli in Kileti, I was immediately pulled in by her distinctive pottery and her gracious personality. Over the course of the following week I observed this charismatic woman perform her daily tasks and backbreaking pottery chores with seeming ease and constant joy. "I love my work, which is why some other potters are jealous of me. They...
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More articles from African Arts
Ewe ceramics as the visualization of Vodun.(research note), March 22, 2007
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Corrections.(Correction notice), March 22, 2007
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