Continuity and Change in Yoruba Pottery

Abstract

Mrs. A.K. Fatunsin's Yoruba pottery (Lagos, 1992) is the outcome of a project funded by the Ford Foundation (grant no. 875–1066) as part of its continuing programme ‘to preserve and interpret diverse aspects of West Africa's cultural heritage’. The intention of the project as suggested to them in 1985 by this author was that it should ‘go beyond the mere collection of artefacts’. Emphasis was to be ‘placed on techniques of pottery manufacture, sources and types of raw material, methods of forming the pots, decoration and firing, as well as forms and functions including the designated names for the pots in the different parts of the Yoruba speaking area.’ Also investigated would be the uses to which the pots were put; and the organization, beliefs and customs of the potters themselves. The monograph resulting from the work would be designed to show pots ‘not just as art objects but as basic components of the entire economic, social, and religious life of the people’.