
Helene Love-Allotey
Head of Department
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Head of Department
Provenance
Acquired directly from the Abuja Pottery Training Centre;
A private collection.
As the daughter of a local weaver, Kande Ushafa came from a family of craftsmen and potters. Traditionally, pottery was considered a woman's exercise due to the gender normative roles conventionally related to pots such as cooking and domestic displays. What was equally traditional was the application of incising decoration onto works by using a combe made out of broken bits of bone or grass.
Consistent with the potter's overall body of work, Ushafa's skill and technique in designs via incised lines prior to firing is not only for aesthetic purposes, but alludes to historical narratives and legends. Glazed under a high fire in an Abuja Jun Glaze, this work's appearance in optical blue's catalysed by oxidising during firing.
Bibliography
Tanya Harrod, The Last Sane Man, Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2012), p. 294.
Jareh Das, Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art (Two Temple Place: London, 2022)