The Ladi Kwali Pottery in Suleija is 54 years old this year. It has not been a working pottery as long as that, it is true; but it was in August 1951 that the English studio potter, Michael 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. Michael 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 simplicity 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 Centrex 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 commitments. 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 modernizing the northern region of Nigeria. I suspect that this masculine bias involve all sorts of different reasons.

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 Centrex 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.