I’ve seen some great art over the past few days, but today I felt so happy and grateful to connect with clay artists from Ghana (fellow mud people). Vume is a small town located in the south-eastern region of Ghana. The community lives on a huge bed of earthenware clay, and they were so incredibly welcoming and generously showed me every step of their techniques for making ceramics, from where and how they mine their clay, to firing the finished works. It was beyond awesome.
As we entered the town, I was in awe: pottery lining the streets as far as I could see.
Michael Cardew, a well-known British potter, set up a pottery studio in Vume for five years in the 1940s.
This is the original chimney that remains from his kiln.
A potter in Vume making planters and vases on an electric potter’s wheel
A view from his studio
Kilns sit side by side with houses throughout the entire town. I must have seen at least fifteen or twenty kilns.
Clay is brought up to this cement storage box, then scooped out and mixed with water.
Clay is softened into slip, then laid out in the sun until it is ready.
These potters were so incredible - they made these perfectly symmetrical pots upside down by hand in just a few minutes.
The pots are "open-air fired" - stacked at angles, then covered with palms and thatch and fired for a few hours.
Just about everything in this picture is made of clay - the ground, the house, and the pots.