African pottery and ceramics

Among the world's first potters

In the 2000s archaeologists working at Ounjougou, in central Mali, reported pottery fragments about 11,400 years old — among the earliest ceramics in Africa and anywhere outside East Asia. They were made in a Sahara far greener than today's, probably to cook the wild grains people were gathering. Africa did not import pottery from elsewhere; it invented it.

How African pots are made

Across most of sub-Saharan Africa, potters build vessels by hand rather than on a wheel: coiling ropes of clay, pinching, beating the clay over a mould or a hollow in the ground. Surfaces are polished with smooth stones (burnishing) and decorated by incising, stamping, or rolling a twisted cord or carved roulette across the wet clay.

Pots are usually fired in open bonfires at relatively low temperatures. Some are then blackened with smoke, or brushed while still hot with plant liquids that leave a sheen. Unglazed clay stays slightly porous, which is why a water jar keeps water cool as it slowly evaporates through the walls.

In many communities pottery is women's work, passed from mother to daughter; in some, potters' families form distinct groups with their own rules and ritual roles.

Regional traditions

• Nubia (Sudan): the potters of the Kerma culture, from around 2500 to 1500 BCE, made thin-walled red vessels with glossy black rims, among the finest pottery of the ancient world.
• West Africa: Gbari (Gwari) water jars in central Nigeria — the tradition Ladi Kwali grew up in — and the terracotta figures of Nok and of Djenné-Djenno in Mali.
• Central Africa: the Mangbetu of the DR Congo made vessels whose necks are elegant human heads with the elongated hairstyles admired at their court.
• Southern Africa: Zulu beer pots (ukhamba), burnished black and decorated with raised patterns, are used to serve sorghum beer. Nesta Nala (1940–2005) became their most celebrated maker.
• North Africa: here the Islamic world's techniques arrived — the wheel, the kiln and glaze. Fez is known for blue-and-white wares, Safi for its potters' quarter, and Tamegroute for green-glazed pottery; the same skills produce the glazed tiles of North African architecture.

Ladi Kwali

Born around 1925 in the village of Kwali, in central Nigeria, Ladi Kwali learned to make Gbari water jars from her aunt. In 1954 she joined the Pottery Training Centre that the British potter Michael Cardew had opened in Abuja (today's Suleja) in 1952, becoming its first woman potter. There she learned the wheel, stoneware glazes and high-temperature kilns, and combined them with the forms and incised patterns of her own tradition. Her pots were exhibited in London and elsewhere, she was appointed MBE in 1963, and her portrait appears on Nigeria's 20 naira note. She died in 1984.

Magdalene Odundo

Born in Nairobi in 1950 and trained in Britain, Magdalene Odundo makes hand-built, burnished vessels whose swelling forms recall bodies and whose surfaces are fired to deep orange or glossy black. She draws on pottery traditions from Kenya, Nigeria and beyond as well as on ancient ceramics from around the world. Her work is held by major museums, and she was made a Dame in 2020.

Ceramics today

Contemporary ceramicists include the South Africans Andile Dyalvane, known for large, expressive vessels, and Clive Sithole, who reworks Zulu forms; across the continent, village potters continue to supply markets with cooking and water pots made the old way.

Buying old pots and terracottas

Archaeological terracottas — Nok, Djenné-Djenno, and others — are among the most looted objects in Africa, and many countries forbid their export. Read how to buy African art before buying anything described as ancient.

Related

Clay figures belong to the history of African sculpture. Ladi Kwali's story is part of our guide to African women artists. For another art made largely by women, see African beadwork. For modern ceramic artists, see our list of African ceramic artists.