Ceramics and Pottery Arts and Resources

 

A visual exploration on the theme of women using their pottery in performance, creation, transportation, market sales and rituals.

 

 Toubou woman souvenir seller. western Ennedi. Chad

Photo – © Jacques Taberlet.

 

The traditional usage of pottery taps into a rich vein of customs, from tribal ceremony and production techniques to being integrated into dance performance and street festivals. The ancient traditions used the pot as a metaphor for sustenance and divine plentitude following the ancient tribal belief of enacting visual rituals to attract abundance. The Bihan Parab “Indigenous Seeds Festival ” in India has a procession of women carrying decorated earthen pots containing seeds accompanied by youths with drums, which passes through all the villages.. The leading woman carries a special pot constructed with paddy seeds, symbolizing Lakshmi, the Goddess of Wealth. Ritual dancing among worshippers of the thunder deity, Shango, sometimes balance a pottery container of fire on their heads while dancing. The Egbado Yoruba have dances that include balancing “delicate terracotta figures” on their heads while moving their arms and torso.
Some of the surviving ancient cultures value and preserve these traditions even more so now with the pervasive growth of modern technology.

 

 

Selling Calabashes on the street in Mali, Africa

 

The American Native Indians have undergone a revival of their indigenous pottery art and rescued techniques and knowledge from the claws of obscurity and created successful enterprises from their traditional arts. It has been recognized as an essential path to preserving their ancestral traditions and craftsmanship and has led to the advancement of their art forms and become a vital resource.
It’s fascinating to see that many of these cultures prefer to adhere to the ancient traditions of their ancestors, excavating their clay, using hand assembly and firing their pots using age-old practices rather than modern techniques. The reverence to their traditions has reinforced their culture through its methods, simplicity and spiritual observations of feast days, seasonal festivals and tribal laws. These customs can date back thousands of years and carry a deep resonance so its understandable how pottery making and other crafts have helped to maintain a sense of cohesiveness in their culture. An ancient belief existed that Athena, the patroness of crafts, imparted rejuvenation to women who dedicated themselves to creative tasks such as – pottery, weaving, tapestry, and playing music.
Sometimes the whole family is involved in the production of the pottery crafts, and the woman are the primary artisans. Their innate sensitivity is respected, especially with certain pots and figures created with specific decorations that can impart spiritual awareness through their physical handling. In some instances, the pottery arts is solely a matriarchal endeavor.

 

Traditional pottery making at Kalabougou village in Mali

 

 

Kalabougou women using tree cuttings to make a mound to fire their pots

Segou, Mali

 janetgoldner.com

 

 

 Women from the village of Kalabougou on the River Niger baking their hand made clay pots

 

 

 Quenching –  Immersing hot pots into a berry mixture. The older woman in the background is picking up a smaller pot with a pair of tongs

 

 

 A Kalabougou woman applying a red stone slip for glazing, from an art market, to the formed and dried pot before firing.

janetgoldner.com

 

 

 

  Kalabougou women firing pots, Mali – Africa

Allan Rickmann –  flickr

 

 

 Female potter hand making large clay pots at the village of Kalabougou

 

 

Tribal woman forming a pot – Kalabougou village

photo by Jacqueline Hoerter & Patrick Houdebine

See video below for more Kalbougou Pottery

 

 

 Fratelli Fanciullacci jug with glazed and unglazed surface

 

 

 

Pipe smoking female potter

Ceramic is an art form exclusive to women among the Karajá in Brazil

Photo: Vladimir Kozak

 

 

 Acasia wood figure of a servant girl. New Kingdom, Egypt

Louvre Museum

 

 

 African Zulu girl carrying a traditional pot

 

 

 Alfarera of Cocucho in Charapan, Mexico – making a pot with her daughter

 

 

Selling pots at Hassan Nagar in city of Hyderabad

 

 

 Zoraida performing the Pot Dance Choreography as part of the original Bal Anat belly dance troupe begun by Jamila Salimpour in 1968 in California

 

 

 Bal Ana dancing

 

 

 

 Sotho woman with pot, ZA

 

 

 Woman carrying pot in a Olbia Tempio street parade, Italy

 

 

 Dogon Tribe women with pots

 

 

 Apache woman with woven pot

Photo – Native News Network

 

 

Children playing Matka, a traditional Indian game where a pot of ghee is broken.

 

 

 

Reclining women with pot – Japanese lithograph –  Muramasa Kudo

 

 

 

 Hopi woman with a jar.  Their art used symbols and signs to represent their ideas, beliefs, dreams, and visions.

” The most successful imitator of this ancient ware, who is not a Hopi at all, but the Tewa woman Nampeyo, of the village Hano, says that its superiority was obtained by the use of lignite, by which the prehistoric potters were able to fire their vessels for several days; but a well-informed traditionalist, on the contrary, asserts that it is the result of burying the clay in moist sand for a long time, perhaps two moons, which ’caused something in the clay to rot’.”  – crystalinks.com

 

 

 

 

Up to 400 women  participating in a yatra ( pilgrimage ) in a celebration of their identity as women and equal human beings. In defiance, they took water from a pump at the Ganges River designated for use only by upper caste peoples, which excluded them. After they took the water back to their villages they returned to the Ganges riverside once again, throwing the pots into the river, and collectively taking a vow that they would not let themselves be oppressed in the year ahead.

(WNV / Priyanka Borpujari)

 

 

 

Ganges Yatra – Bihar’s Khagaria district – 2011

 

 

Photo by 20th-century Indian photographer A.L.Syed

 

 

Indian girl weaving  Photo by A.L.Syed

 

 

 Indian water bearers

enkaustikos.blogspot.com.es

 

 

 

Painting handmade coil vases, – Lucinda Mudge

The Gallery at Grande Provance, Franschhoek, South Africa

 

 

 

 Nesta Nala—famous for her sought after pottery specifically the ‘Ukhamba’–a smoke black, thin walled, round bottomed beer pot,

 

 

Pot bearing women walking in the early morning through giant Baobab trees to the market in Madagascar, 2006

phoho- Beth Moon

 

 

A women strolling past a pottery shop –  Jaisalmer, Rajasthan

indiapictorial.com

 

 

 

 Painting pots in Pondicherry

 

 

 

A woman from the Kabylia and Aures mountains making pottery

 

 

 

A Purepecha Woman with her clay pots in Cocucho, Michoacan, Mexico

 

 

 

Rosa Covarrubias circa 1926 by Edward Weston

 

 

 

Royal Worcester ‘Egyptian Water Carrier’ figurine modelled by  James Hardey

1919

 

 

 

Nuer woman, Sudan

 

 

 

Art Deco statue of women with pot –  San Diego City & County Administration Building

penfoto – flickr

 

 

 

Street art in Senegal

 

 

 

South Tunisian girl with pot

 

 

 

 ‘The daily grind’– Traditional painted house in Kassena, Burkina Faso.

By Louis Montrose

 

 

An old postcard photo of a Bedouin girl in Tunisia

 

 

 

Renown Venda potter, Rebecca Matib

 

 

Woman racing with Matka earthen pots in the desert at the Bikaner camel festival-2011

 

 

Vintage postcard of a Chaouri/Berber girl

 

 

 

Women painting a mud house with zigzag notifs – Kassena Compound, Ghana

 

 

 

An Afghani women wearing a traditional outfit

 

 

 

Pot emporium, Jaipur, India

 

 

 

A women wearing a tribal dress in Jaisalmer, India

Photo J. Versteeg

 

 

 

 Women carrying large water jars

 

 

Figurine of Grecian man and woman – Royal Dux porcelain

 

 

 

From the book, African Image by Sam Haskins

 

 

 

Woman with Urn – French Art Nouveau

1900’s

 

 

 

French Art Deco Figural Statue by Pierre LeFaguays

1920’s

 

 

 

Detall de les rajoles by Matilde Martínez

 

 

 

Raks Sharqi veil dancing on elevated heels with pots

 

 

Daasanach warrior girl

 The Daasanach tribe is one of the ancient tribes of Africa. These pastoralists live in three different East African countries, Kenya, the Sudan, and Ethiopia.

 

 

 

Terracotta figure of Rebecca at the well by Friedrich Goldscheider

19th Century

 

 

Pâte de verre, Vase by Gabriel Argy-Rousseau (1885-1953)

 

 

 

Mursi tribe woman with pot, Ethiopia

 

Photo Irving Penn – 1967

 

 

Welcome Ceremony. Rajasthan, India

 

 

Royal Dux Art Nouveau Ceramic Figural Bowl

 

 

 

Sculpture by Furio Piccirilli

Photo by Eugen Neuhaus

 

Kalabougou pottery in Mali

 

 

 

Also see the Veniceclayartists post – Women with Pots

 

 

 

 

 

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