|
|
Michael Cardew
1901-1980
Nigerian Field Vol 66 Pt.2 Oct 2001
Michael Cardew and the Abuja potters by Liz Moloney - photos by Doig Simmonds ©1959
|
The Ladi Kwali Pottery in Suleija is 50 years old this
year. It has not being
a working pottery as long as that, it is true; but it was in August 1951 that the English studio
potter, Micheal Cardew, recruited by the Nigerian colonial Government in 1950 as pottery
Officer, moved up from Lagos to the small town then called Abuja and started, with a small team of local workmen to build the new Pottery Training Centre. Ladi Kwali was not to join the trainees there until the end of 1954, but Cardew had already been excited by her beautiful pots in the village of Kwali and hoped to persuade her to come and work with
him.
Looked at from the vantage point of 2001, for the colonial government to start busying itself about the “improvement” of the pottery techniques of Nigeria it was odd thing to
happen, considering that Nigerian pots, made according to the traditional method practiced for
centuries, were are magnificent already. The decision to do this, however, resulted in the potters who made
then. Micheal Cardew was one of the best publicist ever for West Africa`s traditional potters even as he worked to create a new network of rural Potteries using techniques foreign to the
region.
|
|
He went to Nigeria when he was 49, not because he had an urge to change Nigerian pottery but because he desperately wanted to get back to west Africa where he had unfinished business after 5 years spent in Ghana ( then Gold Coast ) 1943-1948. He was deeply attached to a young potter
there, Clement Kofi Athey, who was running the pottery at Vume they had set up
together, but had had to return to England after re-current ill-health and he felt he owed it to Kofi not to allow that project to
fail. From Nigeria he thought he could keep in touch, and visit during his leave, for the sake of his obsession with Africa he left behind him once again his pottery at Wenford bridge in Cornwall ( rented out), his wife
(teaching in London), three young sons ( still at school) and his reputation as an outstanding studio potter ( known to
few, even among the British, in Nigeria ).
Of course, Nigeria took him over and altered his motive.
He did a preliminary tour of the Western
region, and quickly reported to the department of commerce and industries that some of their ideas needed
modification, he could hardly do himself out a job by rejecting them altogether, given his desire to be in West Africa and work with West African Potters.
|
Ladi Kwali making pots on a
wheel, ca 1959
|
|
In fact the job description he had been given was not about changing traditional pottery but about setting up a sort of inter mediate technology
project, a rural industry using the wheel, glazes and high-firing in the European studio pottery
tradition.
It was evidently prompted by the perceived need for a home-grown industry to supply the middle-class Nigerian demand for a glazed tableware suitable for European-style meals and hot
drinks, at that time already supplied by factory-produced imports.
Cardew`s first report of July 1950 states that a wholesale transformation of the Nigerian native pottery industry is considered to be neither practicable or
desirable`, although he said this idea had been widely entertained by non-technical
observers. This native industry had ‘technical advantages peculiar to it, which the others do not possess’, was ‘distinguished by simiplicity and nobility in shape and decoration’, remarkably cheap to
produce, and ‘in a healthy state and not likely to suffer from the competition of locally-produced glazed
wares.’ He pointed out that glazing and high-firing to make the proposed table ware non-porous ‘ would largely lose one of the great virtues of the native pottery - tolerance of the thermal
shock.’ He felt able to support the argument for a home industry to run parallel to the local village
pottery, producing pots for a modern middle- class westernized life style. he proposed small ‘experimental stations’ with small numbers of
trainees, rather than a central school of ceramics.
This report resulted in his promotion to senior pottery Officer, and for the next two years he was involve in the setting up of pottery at Okigwe and Ado-Ekiti with other British pottery
Officers, V A Gregory and S Atkins. But the decision about where to put the northern region pottery training centre turned out to be the crucial one for
Cardew, and for a number of Nigerians whose lives were changed by it.
The notes, illustrated by sketches, for his second report in early 1951, following a tour of Nigeria`s Northern Region in November and December 1950, show his excitement as he discovered its varied
pottery; he especially admired the pots made by women in the Abuja area. He was
able, as a colonial Officer, to call upon an impressive network of existing knowledge to help
him. Local potters, district heads, administrators, miners, Geologists Educationists Missionaries - all sorts of people knew about the soil
structure, the transport systems, the fuel, the traditions and other factors he had to consider in deciding how to
proceed, and in particular, where to site the Pottery Training Center. He was allowed to use the Furnaces of the Amalgamated Tin mines of Jos to test clay
samples.
It was a unique support system for a researcher into traditional pottery as well as prospective local
potter.
‘We decided ABUJA after all!’ he wrote in his note after a meeting in Kastina with Stanhope (Sam) White of the department of Commerce and Industries,
Kaduna, in April 1951. ‘Good and central for N.Nigeria, Wonderful local pots, a nice town where trainees can live, Hausas would not be out of place
there, and above all, a 1st rate Emir – yes, hurray !!!’
The ‘after all’ meant ‘in spite of Abuja’s not being on the railway’, but as it was to be a training center and not a commercial production Center, this was decided not to be
crucial. Abuja was the place for ‘inspiration’, he said, and that would made for good
pots.
From late August 1951 he supervised the building of the pottery at
Abuja, locally thatched buildings; (the present ones were built in 1973 ) and started selecting
trainees. Who were these to be? An aspect of the European-style pottery which contrasted with African pottery was the fact that the trainees were expected to be men, where as most of Nigerian potters were
women. Hausa land was the big exception, although within northern Nigerian there were also non-Hausa communities with women
potters. The Abuja emirate was Hausa, that its population was overwhelmingly Gwari and included outstanding Gwari women
potters. Cardew, in his 1950 report, said he envisaged the new techniques being mainly to men with only a ‘Small fringe’ of women
potters.
This could be for a numbers of reasons, some referred to elsewhere in Cardew’s writings such as the fact that in the traditional
industries, potting was,in parts, the whole way of life, not something as a western industrialized society and regarded as a
career. Men would found it easier to train and join a paid work- force, because they were less encumbered by family
committments. This view may be regarded as reflecting British prejudices and practices and distorting African Society
structure, as happened in the case of Agricultural and other training. Or you could see it as a realistic
appraisal, since Cardew had already suggested that the traditional, mainly women, potters would not adversely affected by a new small-scale industry and African
societies, like British once at the time also tended to separate men’s and women’s
work. He had himself always worked with other men in both England and the Gold
Coast, except when apprenticed with Bernard Leach, and would probably be inclined
to prefer this.
As it later turned out, the Abuja Pottery Training Centre`s star potter ( Cardew would have hated the description of any potter as a
star, but that was exactly what she became on overseas tour ) was a woman, Ladi
Kwali, whose basic skill and genius, he always freely acknowledged, were fully developed before she joined
him. But there were always more men than women working with Cardew. It is odd in a way that he went along with the argument for a separate work force outside the old social
structures, given that he always professed a desire to eliminate the distinction between one’s working life and everything
else, and to achieve an undivided life as had been done in pre-industrial England. But he had to work within a framework of an administration struggling to show that it was modernising the northern region of Nigeria. I suspect that this masculine bias involve all sorts of different
reasons.
|
|
The Pottery, Abuja c 1959, left
woodstove, right kiln
|
|
So the earliest trainees were Hausa men, Audu and Gwadabe from Kano, Closely followed by men from other regions with an increasing number of local
potters. Among the first to start were Okoro Ike from the south-east, Tankol Ashada Mohammed and Bawai
Ushafa. Audu Mugu and Sidi came down from Sokoto. Later came Bako Maigari, Audu
(Wahala) and Musa (Nawa) Nok in 1956, Mohammed Inuwa, Hassan Lapai and Usman Zukoko in 1957, Ibrahim Muhtari Zaria and Peter Bute Kuna Gboko in 1957, Gugong Bong, Bala Yawa and Abu Karo in 1958 . Kofi
Athey, though continuing to run the Vume pottery in Ghana, worked at Abuja for several stints of a few months before coming to Nigeria to run the new Jos pottery in 1963. The kiln gang, who remained throughout Cardew`s time and
later, were Danjuma Kilin, Husseine, Gwari and Na`anabi.
However quite early on, Cardew`s preference for male trainees was overridden by his respect for superb skill and his wish to work with people endowed within. In the Abuja area, these were women. He had wanted to bring Ladi Kwali into the training centre from the beginning, and finally, after negotiations with her and with the local authorities, she arrived in December 1954.She learned to throw ordinary tableware and smaller pots for practical use, but she also continued to hand-build pots, which were then controversially glazed and high-fired. Cardew was well aware of the drawbacks of this procedure in terms of weight and utility. They were much less breakable than traditional pots though, and they became Collector`s treasures, now worth huge sums at auction which neither Cardew nor Ladi herself could ever have envisaged.
Cardew`s international reputation played a key role in putting Abuja potters on the international ceramic world map. He had previously exhibited at the Berkeley Gallery in London, and was able to arrange for Abuja exhibitions there in 1958 and 1959, which increased his own fame and made Ladi Kwali in particular a name in the pottery world. Her success opened the door to other women potters: Halima Audu from Ido, came in 1959, and made some superb pots (in Britain, her work can be seen in the Milner-White collection at York City Art Gallery.) She died tragically young only two years later. Asibe Ido and Lami Toto arrived in 1963, followed by Kande Ushafa. At the time of Cardew`s departure in 1965, the four surviving women along with six men-Tanko Ashada, Gugong Bond, Peter Gboko, Abu Karol, Ibrahim Muhtari and Bawa Ushafa, plus Danjuma Landam, Assistant pottery Officer, were still at the Abuja Pottery training center. The Kano and Sokoto Potters had gone back to their home towns, and Okoro had gone to modern ceramics in Umuahia.
|
 Above - Ladi Kawli's pots being fired in the traditional way
|
|
Some of these potters and no doubt others who never left there
villages, were also outstanding, but Ladi Kwali remained grande dame of the Abuja
pottery. In 1962 she spent three weeks in England demonstrating Gwari pot – building
techniques, attending another Berkeley Gallery Exhibition of Abuja Pottery and received the
MBE. Coming back to Abuja she was so full of her experiences that other staffs sardonically nicknamed her ‘Radio London’, ( as Micheal O’Brien, who came to Abuja soon afterwards and later took over from
Cardew, recalls). later she was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria , an unprecendented academic distinction for a woman potter without formal
education. She would certainly not have granted this if she had not been ‘discovered’ by Cardew and then the world outside Nigeria. Micheal Cardew stayed at Abuja until 1965, normally spending ten months there and two on leave at Wenford Bridge in every
year, but also going back to Ghana occasionally to help Kofi at Vume. Abuja turned out to be just as pleasant a place in which to run a pottery training centre as he had envisaged in his diary notes of 1951, and the Emir,the famous Suleiman Barau,was even better than ‘1st rate’,being a
friend, supporter and advisor in everything. But it was not an easy life. Cardew`s early Nigerian years involved him in relentless physical
slog, following in the footsteps of the great geologist Falconer on camping treks of several days at a time in his search for
kaolin, feldspar, limestone and other raw materials for pottery and glazes. He was already in his fifties - much older than the Nigerians who accompanied him -and continued to suffer regular bouts of
ill-health, including bilharzia and from the results of some dramatic car
accidents.
Cardew was unique in his relationship with Nigerian potters, But he was also part of a group of British people in the 1950s who
tried, in the run-up to independence, to make sure that Nigerian art and history were appreciated and preserved for the people of Nigeria. these included Bernard
Fagg, who excavated the Nok culture, started the Jos museum and instigated instigated the magnificient collection of pots there;Sylvia Leith-Ross, who collected the pots for jos at the already distinquished career in
education, the historian Micheal Crowder, who succeeded E.H.Duckworth as editor of Nigeria Magazine and Kenneth Murray, first Survey of
Antiquities. He wrote the introduction ‘pottery techniques in Nigeria’ for Sylvia Leith-Ross’s Nigerian pottery ( Ibadan,1970) and articles on traditional pottery for Nigeria Magazine as well as his book pioneer pottery for studio potters starting up in similar
conditions.
The Abuja Pottery Training Centre never fulfilled the early aim of spreading a network of small
potteries, run by potters trained there, to supply new Nigerian needs.By the late fifties it has become a show piece celebrated in Nigeria and
abroad, and sold mainly to expertriates and members of Nigerian elites. the best pots were put aside for London or other European
exhibitions. Peter Dick, a british potter who worked at Abuja in 1961-2, remembers the staff saying ‘Sai London! Sai paris!’ when an exceptionally good pot emerged from the
kiln.
Potteries started by Abuja- trained potters under Cardew’s guidance in Sokoto and Kano failed within a few
years, largely, Cardew said in later discussions with O’Brien, because as government employees the workers never worked hard enough or use enough initiative to make them
succeed. The later Jos pottery, founded with help from Bernard Fagg and money from an American ‘fairy good
mother`, did continue under Kofi Athey.
How did the training centre continue to obtain government finance well into the era of independence Nigeria? It was never commercial until after cardew’s departure ( under Micheal O’Brien}and its original purpose of created a network of rural industries to supply to supply Nigerians with a tableware made locally from local materials had not been
fulfilled. Was Cardew just lucky to find modest but secure patronage for a marvelous experiment in Anglo-Nigerian cross-cultural ceramics,because of the particular circumstances of northern
Nigerian? Certainly the publicity Abuja brought to Nigeria at a crucial time in its history was favourably viewed by both the late colonial and new Nigerian
governments.
Michael Cardew, having left Nigeria rather reluctantly ( though well past civil service retirement age at 64
),did not cease to be involved with his old friends. Ladi Kwali went on another triumphant tour demonstrating her
work, this time to the United states in 1972 with Cardew and Kofi athey assisting and explaining where
necessary. She has continued working at the pottery, and one the most delightful scenes in the BBC television film of 1974 Mud and Water man shows her greating Cardew on her return visit to his old place at Abuja with its new
buildings. He continued his active and international life until his sudden death in Cornwall in 1983. Ladi Kwali died at almost the same time but at a much younger age in Minna.
Kofi Athey, after leaving Jos at about 1990, worked in the early nineties at Margaret Mama’s Jacaranda
pottery, also near Kaduna, with some other Abuja staff trained by Cardew, and is believed to died in Ghana in the 1990’s. The Emir of
Abuja,
who was so vital a part of this ( as of other developments in his emirate), has also
died. So what is left ?
There has been small but significant continuing results from this unusual episode in late colonial
history, and this obsession of an English potter. There was of course the impact of Ghana and Nigeria on Cardew’s own
work, for the pots of his west African period are generally agreed to have been among his best. But also he gave a unique training to his small group of trainee potters and stimulated
appreciation, both in Nigeria and elsewhere, of traditional pots and potters.
The Ladi Kwali pottery at Abuja is still government–owned and employing
staff, but reports suggest it is not producing much pottery. I have not yet been able to visit it to see for
myself.
Perhaps the Anglo-Nigeria studio pottery movement started by Cardew is being upheld more effectively elsewhere in the
country.
Michael O’Brien, Cardew’s colleaque and immediate successor, continues to spent much of his time unobtrusively helping Nigerian
potters. One such is Danlam Aliyu of Al Habib pottery, Minna, who was trained by O’Brien at Abuja and then by Cardew at Wenford Bridge, his pottery in Cornwall. Danlami has written in Pottery Quarterly about his work and the fact that his work is different from that of local women but in no way supplants it. His brother Umaru also runs a successful small
pottery, the Maraba near Kaduna. Others, though not directly connected to Cardew, have found inspiration in his work for similar subjects in other parts of Nigeria. Cardew’s forecast that traditional pottery would not be threatened by this studio pottery has been proved
correctly. The threat comes from much bigger forces. Cardew’s was a ‘small is beautiful’
enterprise, embodying his care for, and enjoyment of, the people and their
environment.
This article arises from research for a project biography of Micheal Cardew’s work in west Africa from 1942 to 1965. I would like to thank Michael O’
Brien, Cardew’s successor at Abuja, and Michael Cardew’s eldest son, Seth
Cardew, of Wenford Bridge Pottery in Cornwall, for their great help with this
project, as well as Cardew’s friends and colleaques who have contributed their
recollections.
REFERENCES
Cardew M.A. 1950 A preliminary Survey of pottery in West Africa (report). Lagos, Department of Commerce and Industry
1951 A Tour of parts of Zaria, Plateau, Niger, Ilorin and Kabba …(report) Lagos Department of Commerce and Industry
1952 “Nigerian Traditional Pottery,” Nigeria Magazine39
1961 “Firing the Big Pot and Kwali,” Nigeria Magazine 70
1962 “ Traditional Pottery. The pottery training Centre,” in Alhaji Hassan and Mallam Shaibu Na’ibi,
tr.F.Heath,
A chronicle of Abuja, African Universities Press, 2nd ed. Lagos
1969 Pioneer Pottery. London: Longman
1988 A Pioneer Potter: An Autobiography. London: Collins
1989 A Pioneer Potter (paperback) Oxford University Press
1970 “Pottery Techniques in Nigeria,” in S.Leith Ross, Nigerian Pottery Ibadan University Press
Unpublished notes, letters and diaries, consulted courtesy of his son,Seth Cardew
Aliyu,D 1980 “Nigerian Pottery Tradition and New Techniques,”
Pottery Quarterly Michael Cardew and pupils 1983
Cataloque: exhibition at York City Art Gallery
Clark,G. 1978 Michael Cardew. London: Faber
Falconer, J.D 1911 the geology and geography of Northern Nigeria. London: Macmillian
Hallum, Alister 1974 Mud and Water Man BBC/Arts Council of Great Britain (television
programme)
O’Brien,M. 1975 Abuja after Michael Cardew,” Ceramic Review 34
|
Footnotes: Quality of photos - The photographs are scanned from the journal and enhanced as far as
possible.
Among other resources on the web - see www.studiopottery.com/potters/cardewmichael.html
|
|
|
 |
|
Council