Celebrating Ladi Kwali : Google Doodle honours Nigerian potter Ladi Kwali
Ladi Kwali, OON, MBE (c.1925– 12 August 1984) was a Nigerian potter.
Ladi Kwali was born in the village of Kwali in the Gwari region of Northern Nigeria, where pottery was an indigenous occupation among women. She learned to make pottery as a child by her aunt using the traditional method of coiling. She made large pots for use as water jars, cooking pots, bowls, and flasks from coils of clay, beaten from the inside with a flat wooden paddle.
They were decorated with incised geometric and stylized figurative patterns, including scorpions, lizards, crocodiles, chameleons, snakes, birds, and fish. She would impress patterns on top of the figures by rolling small roulettes of twisted string or notched wood over the surface of the clay, sometimes as horizontal banding and sometimes in vertical panels.
The wooden roulettes consisted of small cylinders of hard wood, two or three inches long and a half-inch in diameter, notched with straight, oblique, or parallel patterns. The earthenware vessels and decorative techniques have been dated back to neolithic period.
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Following the region’s traditional method, they were fired in a bonfire of dry vegetation. Her pots were noted for their beauty of form and decoration, and she was recognized regionally as a gifted and eminent potter. Several were acquired by the Emir of Abuja, Alhaji Suleiman Barau, in whose home they were seen by Michael Cardew in 1950.
Early life
She was born in the small village of Kwali, present Kwali Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory, in 1925 (Other historians indicate her date of birth is actually 1920). She grew up in a family that kept up with the folkloric female tradition of pottery making. Mallam Mekaniki Kyebese, Ladi Kwali’s younger brother, stated; “even in the early years of pottery making, Ladi Kwali excelled in the crafts and her wares were often sold even before they were taken to the markets”.
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During her first professional years, the traditional cultural environment moved her to produced pottery pieces that were influenced by the Gbagyi tradition and accentuated with personal idioms. Her approach to clay was echoed by mathematical undertones, made visible by the continuous display of symmetry.
Google Doodle honours Nigerian potter Ladi Kwali
Today’s Doodle honours the life of Ladi Kwali, a Nigerian educator, ceramicist, glassworker, and potter whose intricately decorated earthenware designs introduced the world to the beauty of Nigerian art. The Skoto Gallery in New York hosted an exhibition of Ladi Kwali’s work on this date in 2017.
Ladi Dosei Kwali, a Nigerian potter, was born in Kwali, Abuja, in 1925 to a potter family. When Kwali was a child, her aunt taught her how to make pottery using the coil and pinch methods, which she later developed into her own unique style by creating everyday containers decorated with animal iconography. Soon, local aristocrats began using her exquisite ceramics as decorative accents in their mansions, and it was there that Abuja’s first potter training center’s founder, Michael Cardew, first noticed her talent in 1950.
A pioneer of advanced pottery techniques in Nigeria, Kwali joined the Abuja Pottery Center in 1954. She used these new techniques to create a hybrid collection of pottery with a zoomorphic illustration in the style of her traditional work. With exhibitions all over Europe and the Americas, Kwali continued to break the mould into the 1960s, gaining international recognition.
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As a university lecturer later in her career, Kwali shared her expertise with the local community. When it came to academic recognition for her accomplishments, she received a doctorate from Ahmadu Bello University in 1977 as well as the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award in 1980. The twenty Naira note, the first and only Nigerian currency to feature a woman, is a reminder of Kwali’s legacy today.
Thanks for all the good times we’ve had, Ladi Kwali. Thank you for putting your own twist on a centuries-old craft and creating a place for future generations of female artisans.
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