During the 20th century women from the potting villages of Dorbour, Adadiem and other locations west of the Banda hills sold their pots in markets centers to the east and the west. Here women sell clay pots in the market at Bondoukou in Côte d’Ivoire. Visible are varied-sized cooking pots (sro chͻ in Nafaanra), water jars (chͻkoo in Nafaanra) and grinding bowls (pԑԑ in Nafaanra). Only the grinding bowls are blackened which was a fashion that came in sometime in the 20th century. Bondoukou, Côte d’Ivoire, 1994.
A youngster helps a woman remove a loaded headpan as she approaches the thatch-roofed veranda of a room in a compound house. A variety of metal containers used to prepare food and for other household tasks are placed about, along with several calabash bowls and low stools used in this kitchen area. A headpan containing dishes rests on a cluster of hearth stones, lower right. Makala, July, 1994.
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
Publisher:
University of Victoria Libraries
Location(s) Facet:
Makala
Subjects:
Headloading; Metal pots; Headpans
Subjects Facet:
Stools; Thatched roofs; Gourd, Calabash; Courtyards; Lifting and carrying
Akua Donkor, a Nafana potter, etches grooves onto the leather-hard surface of a clay cooking pot (sro chͻ in Nafaanra) before it is fired. The lower part of the jar has been surface treated using a maize cob (bledjukaan in Nafaanra) as a roulette. This gives the pot surface texture, over which the grooved design is made. She wears bracelets that sometimes double as tools to decorate pots. Dorbour, 1994.
A woman inspects a clay jar for sale in the Bondoukou market. Large and small cooking pots (sro chͻ in Nafaanra) and a bowl are displayed for sale. During the 20th century women from Banda potting villages and surrounding areas headloaded their pottery to sell at Bondoukou's weekly market. Bondoukou, Côte d’Ivoire, 1994.
Clay cooking pots (sro chͻ in Nafaanra) stacked at the Bondoukou market awaiting sale. Women have brought these pottery jars from potting villages in Banda (e.g., Dorbour) and the surrounding region (e.g. Bondakile). Bondoukou, Côte d’Ivoire, 1994.
Women headloading pottery prepare to leave Dorbour to walk to the weekly market in Bondoukou, a distance of more than 30 km. They have secured the clay pots by tying nettting or cloth around them. The women are not necessarily potters. Some women trade in clay pots but do not make them. Dorbour, 1994.
Small pedestal-based bowls like this one (called kontondԑԑ in Nafaanra) are used in funeral rituals. Women cook food and offer it to the ancestors in a funeral ceremony called 'sro waa'. Larger versions of these bowls were used in times past as women's eating bowls; however, by the late 20th century small versions like this one were only made to order for funerals. Men were prohibited from touching them. Dorbour, 1994.
Fired clay stands like these were made by potters for use in the kitchen area of houses. Grouped together in threes like hearthstones, the stands supported pots over an open fire during cooking. Some of these fired clay stands had an opening, allowing pieces of meat to be placed inside where it slow-cooked and dried as other parts of the meal were cooking. Dorbour, 1994.
Yaa Tenabrԑ, a Nafana potter, sits on a wooden stool as she scapes the interior of a large clay pot. A metal bucket containing moist clay covered in plastic sits nearby. A well-worn grinding stone is visible at the top of the photo, on top of which rests a pink plastic cup. A small clay bowl filled with water sits next to it. The blue headpan to the right can no longer be used to carry things, but it remains useful as a support or stand for other things like round-based water storage pots. Dorbour, 1994.
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
Publisher:
University of Victoria Libraries
Location(s) Facet:
Dorbour
Subjects:
Forming; Women's work; Potting; Plastic containers; Dorbour; Headpans; Metal buckets; Grinding stone
A standing potter bends over as she begins to pull a clay lump upwards and outwards, using a draw-and-drag (direct pull) technique to form the walls of a clay pot. The clay rests on a metal plate (kpankpa in Nafaanra) which allows her to move the pot aside to dry once its body and rim are formed. Once dry, she will add a rounded base. The finger marks visible at this stage of the pot's forming show the direction in which she pulls the clay as she works. Adadiem, 1994.