This paper is targeted at a far-reaching and fundamental environmental and economic implication, in a positive sense, for our traditional potters who have burnt out their life-time energies in pursuit of survival which has often been elusive.  Without upsetting the basic norms of pottery, this presentation will seek to subtly but firmly discuss the possibilities of higher income from their creative endeavours.

The origin of traditional pottery in Nigeria cannot be located precisely.  The practice is certainly of great antiquity.  The contemporary society has viewed the traditional Nigerian pottery with impersonal excitement.  Some people call them pots others call them terracotta.  Yet others address them as pottery-sculptures or ceramic sculpture.  Many families enjoy their potteries in domestic services as plates, flower vases, decorative objects either at the home front or at the office.

The sustenance and continuity of this great tradition should be a collective desire of all that have come in contact with it.  Some had wished and are still wishing they could practise it.  Others have stood to claim such pots as coming from their Local Government Areas.  What many have not done, however, is to commit their thought to the problem encountered in practice by these traditional potters.  If one generation of potters must succeed another, then, their problems should be addressed now or at least be identified pending solutions.

The traditional potter is not burdened by the beauty or otherwise of her pot as much as she is about how much money goes into her pocket, actually her ‘mbenukwu’ (a khaki half-slip bearing pockets worn by traditional market women).

Access to a piece of appropriate information is like having a patchment of right education on a fabric of ignorance.  This can induce a whirlwind of personal and socio-cultural well-being of communities – a community of potters in this case.  It has the capacity to redraw the entire professional roadmap from the pit of deprivation to a plateau of economic empowerment.

The global initiative of personal and collective enhancement has revolved and is still revolving around this much-talked-about economic empowerment.  This becomes more appropriate and expedient when a sorority of potters is the case in point.

For these potters to remain traditional potters, not in a geographical sense, the general principle of production method must not be touched but added to.  For example, their coiling method should not be discouraged in favour of say, casting or throwing. What should be thought of is how to marry them to enhance product volume, improve quality and facilitate market penetration.

The gusto of this empowerment should not be an alibi for oversight.  These potters should be carried along with whatever information they are given to improve their income.  If not, the exercise will be likened to engrafting a strange economic scion on to a reluctant and mentally immature community stem rooted in unawareness and nourished by mutual suspicion.  The entire education involving learning and passage of information will be a patient one.  One in which the potters’ questions will be adequately answered, one, which will address there fears and praise their positive inputs.

Ultimately, the intention of this paper is to reposition the entire vista of traditional pottery through access to essential pieces of information.  It is also aimed at delivering the beneficiaries from the clutches of emotional attachment to, “as it was in the beginning,” to a point where continued inheritance of poverty will clearly be seen as a wrong choice.

HISTORICAL BRIEF

To fully appreciate the odds against the traditional pottery industry, it is important to highlight the circumstances that surround the practice.  The case in point here is a duo of Inyi and Awgbu communities, in Enugu and Anambra States respectively, as previously stated.

Majority of families in these areas have pottery vocation/profession running through them and it has remained the preserve of females.  These communities are seated on clay, which is the principal raw material, and parade enormous human capital and long-running pottery traditions.  Yet, poverty, malnutrition, disease and high mortality index combine to take their unfortunate toll on their population.  These scourges are not natural disasters but strictly negligence and bad gift management due to ignorance.

In more than twenty years of interaction with one of these communities, precisely Inyi, it was discovered that traditional potters have consistently had little or nothing to show for their toil.  Their effort had always outweighed their income by a wide margin.  Theses women, contrary to their expectations have actually inherited a tradition of hopes in mirage and a harvest of inverted fortunes.  Many of them interviewed early in our interaction have died, and all out of a scratchy poverty and deprivation.

This has remained the trend in spite of the weight of creative versatility and productive energies exhibited by them – a pitiable waste of human resources.  The potters have always built their pieces by hand but the symmetry throws a serious challenge to machine – assisted products.  The average age range is between ten and sixty years.  Need and deprivation have not been able to obliterate the resurgence of artistic energy inherent in them along the corridors  between the raw materials and end products.

One peculiar potter that specialized in making life-size giant pots was so frustrated and poor that even on her deathbed, completely blind, was still sending messages to her credit-buyers to pay her.  These giant pots are known as “ite-ogbo” used during age-grade festivals or other festivals to store wine.  Some of these “ite ogbo” have animal form sculptures on their shoulders.  Exciting as these were and are still, they were not nearly able to sustain and maintain their maker – the result of doing old things the old way.  Her daughter however succeeded her and the same pattern trails her unfortunately.

See Plates.

It is mention-worthy that one “ite-ogbo” is capable of holding up to three hundred and four litres of liquid (304 litres) at a time.  The potter claimed she had won first prizes in art competitions at State and National Levels.  She also claimed to have spent some time,  (six months precisely), in Ahmadu Bellow University, Zaria on the invitation of Fine Arts Department as traditional potter-in-residence.

The traditional method of production has always remained coiling but in sculptural pottery, which is also practised in Inyi, pinching and informal slab methods are used also.  In fact “ite-ogbo” is the only focal point, at that size, where these three methods meet – coiling, pinching, and slab method.

Thermal shock is the major source of breakages during firing.  To prevent this or at least to minimize it, grog is usually introduced into the stiff clay and mixed before building.

Typical pots are started off on the left palm and as they outgrow the palm size, they are placed on “anina” or “onu ite” (pot neck) which is then used as a whirler. 

See Plates.

Body decorations are introduced at leather-hard stage.  They consist in concentric or curvilinear and rectilinear three-dimensional embursements.  Sometimes these are worked into geometric patterns which cause the lines to “break” visually and “turn” in a different direction.  The instrument for this type of decoration is known as “nde” the writer or the pen.  It is an instrument carved out of tender Indian bamboo. 

See plates.

Other decorative methods include intensive burnishing using broken coconut shells or flint pebbles known as “nkpulu nkwo”. Stain decoration is vegetation-based.  The bark of an all-season, broad-leafed plant known as “aga” when mashed in water gives the decorative liquid.  This stain decoration is usually done at the stage when the waves are still hot.

There is also decoration using ‘Ulo nji or Ulo Ojii’, “ulo nchalla” omu obala”  (he blood producer).  Uli body decorative patterns of Igboland are also visible on some of their products.

There is an array of decorative methods but since decorative interest does not represent priority in this paper, they will not be pursued.

SETBACKS IN TRADITIONAL POTTERY

Setbacks in traditional approach to pottery must be addressed if the system must survive meaningfully. 

These setbacks are classified under four subheads.

1. Haphazard terrain mutilation

2. Deforestation

3. Rhythm of production

4. Product quality and market penetration

The first two are environmental while the last two are purely technical.

1. Haphazard Terrain Mutilation

Clay mining in these areas has always been manually done.  Hoes, diggers, shovels, and head-pans have been the main implements for digging.  The overall pattern of digging immediately instructs on the need to check the resultant flood pattern.  The entire clay terrain is constantly threatened by seasonal flooding and gulley development due to haphazard approach to digging.  Such “inoffensive” mutilations sometimes become so steep that landslides take place.  Ways should be found by which clay might be won without endangering the environment, and this can only be done through environmental education at community level.  Igbinokogie, in Anijah-Obi (2001) defines Environmental Education as any form of education, both formal and informal, that will influence the attitude of people towards a sustainable use of resources of the environment.

2. Deforestation:

Without firing, pottery cannot be put into any use.  These communities have constantly used the open hearth or the bonfire method for their firing.  This involves arranging logs of wood and grass into mounds with green pots packed among them.  Once the entire arrangement is lit, firing commences and goes on for hours with occasional stoking. 

 

Fig. 2: Woman stoking the fire

 

For as long as pottery had existed in these communities, trees have been felled and the wood used as fuel.  These trees are not being replaced as quickly as they are felled, therefore systematic deforestation has gradually but steadily been put in place.   Fuel wood, a traditional source of energy, still remains a major source of fuel used by millions of persons worldwide as their main or only source of household energy. (Mgbang, 2001).  In Nigeria, as well as other parts of the tropics, the rate of firewood extraction primarily from the natural forest has led to a situation where forest increment is far less than growth by natural regeneration. (Adegbetin, 1992). 

 

Bisong (1994) listed four major reasons why fuel wood is still being used in spite of obvious implications and are summarized below:

• Poverty level which denies people financial access to alternative sources of energy.

• Traditional attachment to firewood usage

• Socio-cultural attitudes and belief systems.

As a matter of urgency, a counter-programme of reforestation through enlightenment and environmental education should be initiated and pursued.  It will take time and persuasiveness to do this effectively.

3. Rhythm of Production

The environmental unfriendliness of clay procurement pattern and firing is not the only thing militating against the traditional pottery.

 

Pottery business at the traditional level is a seasonal affair.  At least it slows to a point where inactivity sets in.  This is because clement weather which is a condition for clay digging and product firing is not guaranteed all the year round.  This fact further depletes the already below-the-poverty-line income for the potters.  During the rains, which last for between seven and eight months, clay digging sites are flooded compelling the women to keep away.  Little quantities of clay dug up during the dry season run out midway into the rains.  Also because long-enough weather clemency cannot be guaranteed to permit open-air firing during the rainy season, firing therefore constitutes an unreasonable risk.

4. Product quality  and Market Penetration

Product selection and production lines which were viable about a hundred years ago, are not, now.  For a long time pottery products were the only vessels available at village level.  In addition, being that these products were low-fired, they broke easily at every turn of use and replacement were sought at high rate.  As the villages reluctantly opened up to contemporary influences, the advent of plastics and fibre products began to question the continued acceptability of these low-fired vessels.  Their firing temperature of between 600^oC and 700^oC was  no longer seen to be able to penetrate and elbow its way into the contemporary market.  A way must therefore be found for strict product selection and to improve the firing threshold of wares.  There must be a fundamental redefinition of the vision for market penetration for the improved products. “. . . the ceramics industry can only survive if it can sell its product at a profitable level (Ojie 2000).  This addresses the case in point.  Quality is the watchword.

WHAT MUST BE DONE TO ACHIEVE SUSTENANCE

Sustaining and upgrading the traditional pottery industry should be a function of collective burden.  Its extinction shares a distant relationship with the present.  Enlightenment through education should be packaged and with economic enhancement bait dangling over it, it is likely to catch.

This enlightenment coupled with patient assurances should be both persuasive and painstaking.  Interviews, seminars, workshops etc should be the vehicle of communication.

Areas of enlightenment and instruction should be principally on:

• The need to put an end to indiscriminate and haphazard mutilation of their clay terrain.  By so doing, possibilities of current flooding and landslide problems will be reduced to the barest minimum.

• The dangers of deforestation through tree-felling at unsustainable level.

• How to make pottery production business an all-season affair by ensuring that clay banks are available for use all the year round.  “The industry should be able to build and unbroken line of good well-designed and quality products . . . that will be able to compete with others in the market place”. (Ekwerre, 2001).

• This will involve the construction of covered sheds under which tipper – loads of clay will be deposited by them in dry seasons.  By so doing product volume will increase, therefore income.

• The way to detach firing of products from weather situations.  This will involve switching over from open-air firing to chamber firing which will use oil (kerosene sump oil or diesel) as its fuel.  This will more than be a good substitute for wood.  Such chamber firing facilities can be used while it is raining.  It is noteworthy that, kerosene, sump oil and diesel are not highly inflammable at all-far from it.

• The need to stream-line production lines and restrict them to those products which can compete with similar products in the market place.  Surface quality will be improved on utility products using glazes.    With the above as fuel source, high temperatures can be attained and used as a part of product image cleansing (for glazed and terracotta pieces).

• Organizing the pottery communities into some sort of guilds for effective teaching, instruction, and production highlighting the need for local participation, which is the basis for successful project implementation.

• The benefits of economic empowerment through wealth creation and improve information awareness and attitude.

Benefits are likely to accrue to both the potters and their community.  Some of these benefits are:

• Gainful self-employment

• Social vices like prostitution, drug and human trafficking will be on the decline, as target age bracket will be gainfully employed.

• Provision of jobs at village level will minimize rural-to-urban migration, which will likely stretch urban utilities beyond their installed capacity.

• Life expectancy will be upgraded as parents will have access to more income and be able to pay for curative and preventive health services as the need arises.  Daily nutrition will also improve for the same reason.

• Percentage drop-out rate from school due to inability to pay fees will be minimized thereby harvesting the benefits of education.

CONCLUSION

At the end  of this exercise, the long-pressed women who have been hoisting the flag of pottery identity and their offsprings will have found a new impetus for living and a renewed hope and confidence as they match into their future with a smile at the corners of their mouth.

Lovers of traditional art/pottery are expected to prove their love by steering such traditions safely to a proper anchor.  The initial investments in terms of time and information dissemination are not likely to be a waste.  This is because the oil of local participation will continue to lubricate the entire engine of self-sustenance rooted in information flow.

In the light of the above, all government and administrative theories and the groping of every vehicle of culture and tourism, wealth creation and economic empowerment ought to be brought to such communities in practical and tangible terms.  The taste of the pudding is in the eating.

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