Smithsonian educator gives talk about African ceramics

By Elizabeth Shearin

Africa has historically suffered economic underdevelopment, but has never been artistically underdeveloped, an educator from the Smithsonian said at Hood College on Sunday.

Pottery makes up a significant portion of the African art tradition, Veronika Jenke told an audience of 16 who had gathered to hear Jenke’s lecture on African Ceramics. Jenke said the diversity of the continent, which has 54 countries and hundreds of languages, means there is much diversity in the pottery.

“There is no single practice in Africa,” Jenke said, “You can build in a much freer way.” She said the pottery traditions in Africa usually took place in the dry season because potters were typically also farmers.

Jenke’s lecture was part of the Art 543 graduate class, History of Ceramic Arts. Currently there are 11 students enrolled in the course, Traci Holland, the associate registrar of Graduate Studies, said.

Jenke said that in the 1980s there was a widespread industry of faking African ceramics, particularly in the area of Nok sculptures. The Nok culture was based in Nigeria from approximately 500-200 B.C. until the entire culture suddenly vanished, Jenke said.

Interest in the ceramic vessels, or pots, of another Nigerian culture, the Igbo-Ukwu was also widespread, Jenke told the audience. One particular Igbo-Ukwu vessel that was excavated in the 1960s at a site found accidentally by farmers. The vessel was intended for an exhibition show but was stolen before the exhibition and was later recovered in Brussels.

The ceramics of ancient African cultures remain relevant through their influence on contemporary ceramics, “The decoration is still being done on contemporary shrine pots,” Jenke said. The vessel would originally have been intended for a “very ritualized society with leadership roles” that needed an object for ritual purposes, she said.

Ritual pots were not uncommon and were often used for “spirit-regarding” in sacred rites or for “human-regarding” in a functional setting, Jenke said. Many of the pots, including the Igbo-Ukwu vessel are large in size, “The volume of some of these vessels is astonishing,” Jenke said.

Jenke described how some of the pieces were thought, by the British, to have been done by someone other than the Africans. “I was intrigued to find that they didn’t want to believe that Africans were capable of making such art,” Wendy Varron, who traveled from Washington County out of curiosity about ceramics.

Varron said she was interested in the discovery of the attitude of some of the Europeans who collected and displayed the African ceramic pieces.

Varron’s interest in ceramics started when she attended a ceramics class with her mother, “I remember going with her once and seeing some of the molds they used and where they fire them,” she said.

Collections of African art are reflective of the principles of the collector as much as they are reflective of the principles of the works collected, Jenke said. She also noted that when the National Museum of African Art first began, the collection was not inclusive of all African art.

Varron said she thought it was interesting that the museum had selected art from only a certain region, “They were only collecting pieces from Sub-Saharan Africa,” she recalled from the lecture.

“Pottery exhibitions are somewhat rare,” Jenke said. “A scattered enterprise.”