Above: At the Khorobhagarat kiln, a brick making team at work. These soft mud bricks quickly lose their shape.
The work of the department head at Sudan University, Professor Salih El Zakir, has adhered to a meticulously executed Arabic style. One quite successful alumnus is Yasir Mohammed. Yasir's elaborately formed pieces are most often unglazed. Large sculptural vessels are slipcast, with a clay body having no deflocculent. The plaster used for moulds is of a low quality typical in much of Africa but the addition of 4% portland cement helps to give the moulds strength.
Across the White Nile from Khartoum, in neighbouring Omdurman, another ceramic devotee is Dr Ahmed Hassan Hood. To financially diversify his business making refractory brick, Dr Hood produces a line of decorative planters and small ziers. As is often the case in Africa, where shared information can be hard to come by, the artist must attempt to be a scientist, and vice versa. Dr Hood is a chemical engineer turned ceramist. Remarkably, with no prior experience other than research in books, he has begun production of good quality kaolin firebrick fired to 1400° C. Dr. hood's oil burning, domed brick kiln was built through trial and error, and patience. His own ceramic journey has been one of pure scientific inquiry: an acquired understanding of what the local materials can do.
Near El Obeid, at Khorobhagarat, the construction of a Hoffman kiln is a new project of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Firing with heavy fuel oil, an express objective for this kiln is to reduce the amount of wood fuel used for brick making in the area. I gave brick forming teams at the kiln some assistance in using a drier mix of clay. With this improvement, the kiln's managers were able to achieve improved stacking in the kiln, resulting in better firing, stronger bricks and reduced fuel consumption.
Left:
Taking a break while carrying water ziers the 15 kilometres from Dajo to El
Obeid market. Below left: Fatimah Hassan with an earthenware duck. The Vocational
Center at El Obeid, Sudan.
Because success in marketing is closely dependent on good technical skills, in 1992 in the US, I founded Appropriate Technology Transfer in Ceramics (ATTIC). My aim was to provide services and technical information to aspiring ceramists. We distributed two do-it-yourself manuals. I wrote one on making models and moulds and another on how to build and operate an inexpensive air-release ceramic press. We also made available 25 out-of-print technical papers which give the basics on various ceramic processes and materials. ATTIC flourished assisting ceramists from the US and many other countries, proving that what is appropriate is needed everywhere and is forever relevant. Appropriate technology is not only applicable to remote villages in the heart of Africa.
A similar body of information exists in back copies of The American Ceramic Society Bulletin, also from the 1930s to the '60s but the demand has not warranted reprinting. Only more recent information, primarily on advanced ceramics, is being rendered to electronic libraries. In the 1970s, my initial pursuit of ceramic information started in Liberia, West Africa. There I worked for 11 years in glass art and I dabbled in ceramics. I began to notice that Liberia and neighbouring countries appeared stuck in a cycle of raw materials exportation and finished goods importation. For export they could mine iron, cut timber and tap rubber, but they manufactured little. In Liberia, I walked every day on a path of kaolin, yet I had to import firebricks for our kiln. Although Liberians and their neighbours were melting and casting iron and other metals in the 19th century, it seems that the metal products imported from Europe and the US supplanted local products. The metal-working industries closed and craft traditions were lost. When I saw this, I decided glass art was too ornamental for me and I could work in ceramics to change these situations for the better.
I enrolled at The New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. Among the more important projects I undertook there was to build a scove kiln with the help of a small group of people who formed Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA). This scove kiln is built of the same bricks that it is firing. (Scoving is the mud on the outside of the kiln.) These simple kilns are built all over Africa with the biggest investment being time and labour. First, clay is dug and formed into bricks. These are dried and stacked en masse, a finger's width apart. A slow wood fire is started underneath and in due course (days later) the kiln is dismantled, the bricks ready to use. But our brick and kiln at Alfred differed from those in Africa in one important respect: we had mixed creek sand by foot into our red clay to make it refractory. We had taken a first journey into an uncharted region of appropriate technology with little prior information as to methodology. Our premise for the scove kiln project was that we were making simple refractory brick and that villagers almost anywhere in the developing world could do the same. Without much financial outlay, villagers could then build ware kilns with the bricks for the production of a variety of ceramic building materials, other refractories, table and sanitary ware. In a second phase, a foundry could make carpentry or farm tools, curtailing costly procurement of imported implements. For water and sanitation, they could make ceramic water filters, pipes and tiles for drainage or simple sanitary wares. For agriculture, kilns can be built to burn lime. Glazed food storage containers would help preserve food until it reaches the market. With all these various sectors in need of simple, inexpensive solutions on a village level, clear opportunities in appropriate, small business developments are wide open. So the journey leads to an inevitable conclusion: the only true guarantee of self-sustainability is, I believe, to be found in ceramics, the starting point of nearly all industry. Training and education in ceramics and in high temperature processes are the prerequisite to start. It is the manufacturers' products, like refractory bricks or carpenters' tools, that make so much industry possible. A consumer product, like a vegetable or an article of clothing, plays no further role in developing industry.
Above: Stalls for foot-mixing brick materials will soon be replaced by a mechanised mixer. This will help make possible the drier mix needed for uniform bricks and proper stacking, resulting in better bricks and reduced fuel consumption.
The people of developing countries are industrious and resourceful, using constructively what many from the richer countries would regard as waste: tyres turned into sandals, discarded coffee cans turned into lanterns, a scrap of paper turned into a bag.
My ceramic safari continued through Ethiopia to Uganda and from there I went to Kenya to work with their Ministry of Commerce, Department of Industry. The legions of tourists that come to Kenya are here to see the wildlife, however, not ceramics. But there is adventure in technology transfer that leads into uncharted areas where appropriate technology in the high temperature processes must be tried, adequately researched and documented. Further areas that need appropriate research include: development of appropriate mould materials as alternatives to plaster-of-paris for casting and pressing; identification and winning of minerals on a micro-scale; development of an appropriate glazed food storage container; and an effective low-cost water filter. While having done work in each of these areas, I am also developing appropriate electric test kilns and their refractories and appropriate crucibles for high temperature processes. All these must be made using available resources because Western-style supplies are rarely available. There is some literature available on this subject and what first comes to mind is Cardew's classic, Pioneer Pottery, based on his own ceramic journey in Nigeria. But a more recent and comprehensive approach to ceramic education and training can be found in a four-volume set of books: The Self Reliant Potters Series, by Henrik Norsker and James Danisch and published by GATE, the German Appropriate Technology Exchange. This series offers the only information of its kind on simplified, appropriate technology of ceramics. Its volumes include: Clay Materials, Refractories and Kilns, Glazes, and Forming Processes. But with respect, Norsker and Danisch's invaluable contribution is only the tip of the iceberg. Each section of each of the four books suggests volumes of additional research.
Another set of books is the series: Build Your Own Metal Working Shop from Scrap, by David Gingery, published in the US by Lindsay Publications. The seven volumes in this series start with a book called: Build a Charcoal Foundry. The second book in the series is called: Build a Metal Lathe. Again, using scrap metal, the cast parts needed for the lathe can be made with the help of the charcoal foundry already built. Gingery's subsequent books tell how to make a drill press, a shaper, a milling machine and all the other accessories needed in a complete metal fabrication shop. All these machines can be made using parts turned on the lathe. The cost of the entire metal fabrication shop is negligible. Through Gingery's books and those of Norsker and Danisch, the means of industrialisation through ceramics and metal are adequately proven. One other book on appropriate technology makes the case for small projects. This is the Schumacher classic: Small is Beautiful. This book stresses developing skills and traditions in various crafts and underlines the problems with large scale industries.
Left:
Low-fire ceramic drums, Dajo, Sudan.
The history of failure of large projects is understood. A brick plant requires electricity for blowers but can get none. A vocational school in the desert has massive machines but neither teachers nor students. But there still exists an impetus to create and fund these white elephants. The allure of a quick fix is irresistible, and the subsequent news of failure is easily squelched. There is a lack of commitment by donors, contractors and beneficiaries, starting with a feeling that no one really owns the project.
So what can we do? If you want to help bring ceramics and micro-enterprise to developing countries, start by telling people that teapots are beautiful, but there is a whole lot more to ceramics. Inform donors and politicians just how vital ceramics is in the development process. Tell them that education and training are the only key inputs and that in developing countries, all other resources are locally available. Let them know that ceramic manufacturers' products make possible a wide variety of other micro-scale industries and that your country's development assistance should be applied to such projects. Get together with other ceramists you know and find ways of assisting ceramists in developing countries.
The goal of this safari is to give individuals a decent and productive livelihood through micro-enterprise and help them to stem environmental degradation at the same time.