When Ladi Kwali met the British studio potter Michael Cardew in the early 1950s, her traditional hand-built water jars were already well known in Nigeria’s Gwari region. Having spotted her work in the Emir of Abuja’s home, Cardew swiftly invited her to join his local government-backed pottery training centre. There she added modern industry’s wheel and kiln to her toolkit to create thrown tableware, and became a star turn within the touring demonstrations Cardew organised in Europe and America.
She was a phenomenal figure, “taking two cultures in her stride”, explains Jareh Das, the Nigerian-British curator of Body Vessel Clay, the forthcoming exhibition teasing out lineages between Black female artists across three generations. Kwali provides the show’s baseline, yet her place in ceramics history is far from straightforward.
