IDNO

N.19609.ROS

Description

Half-length, frontal view of a "type of potter of artisan class with small beer-pot”. The man is wearing a long-sleeved long shirt and he sits on a wooden box (with a metal clasp) in front of a white screen and frame.

Place

E Africa; Uganda; Bunyoro

Cultural Affliation

Banyoro

Named Person

Photographer

?Roscoe, John R.

Collector / Expedition

Roscoe, John R. [Mackie Ethnological Expedition, Uganda, 1919 - 1920]

Date

1919 - 1920

Collection Name

Roscoe Collection

Source

Format

Film Negative Black & White

Primary Documentation

Other Information

This negative was kept in an envelope marked C31/217/ by the cataloguer. The envelope was kept in box marked C31/ by the cataloguer.
Previously stored on Shelf 4, in group of 4 wooden boxes numbered 180.

Publication: Image published in Roscoe, J., 1923. The Bakitara (or Banyoro): The First Part of the Report of The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 273, Plate XXXV, with the caption: Type of potter of artisan class with small beer-pot”. [ED 7/1/2008]

Context: (2) POTTERS: Both men and women made pots, but the better kind used by the king and more wealthy chiefs were invariably made by men, and the king had his own potters who belonged to a special clan and whose sons followed in their footsteps. A potter who made pots for general sale always attached himself to some chief; he made a pot and took it to a chief as a sign that he wished to serve him, after which he settled on the chief’s estate and gave him one from every set of pots he made.
The chief requirements of the pastoral people were milk pots, which varied in size from those containing a pint to the large pots which held a quart or more, and a few water-pots, which were not like the round pot generally found but were nearer an egg-shape and held a gallon or more of water. There was also a regular demand for cooking-pots, which were like basins and sometimes very large, and great beer-pots which held fully four gallons. In addition to these the potters manufactured the heads for the ordinary tobacco pipes, the stems of which were often made of a kind of stick with a thick pith which could readily be pushed out, leaving a hollow tube.
Two kinds of clay, both found in swamps or marshy land, were in general use, one being white and the other black. The common cooking and water-pots were made from the latter.. Each potter procured his own clay, and when he went to get it he had to observe the taboos connected with the beginning of any work. He got men to assist him to carry the lumps, probably weighing about twenty-pounds each, to his house, where he put the clay in a hole about two feet deep and a foot wide and covered it with plantain-leaves. At each new moon he had to take millet and semsem to put in this pit and sprinkle it there that the clay may be good.
To form the base of the pot he took the a lump of clay and placed it in the hollow of a bit of gourd or in the bottom of an old pot, working it thin and smoothing the inside with a scrap of gourd. The clay for the sides was made into long rolls and coiled on, worked to the thickness required with the thumb and fore-finger, and smoothed with the piece of gourd. Coil and coil was added, increasing and diminishing the circumference in accordance with the shape required until the sides were high enough, when it was rounded in to the neck; the man had no wheel and all the shaping was done by hand and eye. It did not take him more than an hour to build the pot, and six pots were usually a day’s work.
The pot was then placed in the shade of his hut or a shed to dry, after which all rough places on the outside were rubbed off with a smooth stone. If it was for the king, the surface was then rubbed over with graphite from a mine at Kigorobya. This graphite was powdered and all light-coloured stone removed, and it was used in two different ways. Sometimes the powder was mixed with butter and blood and made into balls, which when hard were rubbed on the pot until it showed a bright polish. The usual way, however, was to mix the powder with water and juice of the bark of a shrub rukoma which had glutinous properties; this mixture was painted on the pot and left to dry, and the pot again rubbed with the smooth stone until a fine polish was attained.
After polishing, the pots were dried thoroughly and had then to be baked. For this purpose the potter placed them round a large fire and turned them until the fire began to die down and they were very hot, when he pushed them into the remains of the fire, covered them with hot embers and then with grass, and left them. When they were cool, he rubbed them again with the smooth stone and the finished article showed a fine silvery-black polish.” (Roscoe, J., 1923. The Bakitara (or Banyoro): The First Part of the Report of The Mackie Ethnological Expedition to Central Africa. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 225 - 228.). [ED 7/1/2008]

This catalogue record has been updated with the support of the Getty Grant Program Two. [Elisabeth Deane 7/1/2008]