In the quiet village of Kwali in northern Nigeria, a young woman named Kwali learned how to turn lumps of clay into beautiful, almost magical vessels. She started out making traditional Gbagyi pottery, practical pieces for daily life. But her work didn’t stay hidden in her village for long. Over time, her pots travelled to galleries in London, Washington, and beyond. Kwali didn’t just master a craft; she became a legend, so much so that her face now appears on Nigerian currency. Her story stands out as one of the most inspiring in twentieth-century African art.
Discover how Ladi Kwali transformed traditional Nigerian pottery into celebrated art displayed worldwide, becoming the first woman on Nigerian currency.
Foundations in Tradition
Kwali was born around 1925 in the village that gave her its name. In her Gbagyi community, pottery was more than just a job; it was a way of life for women, passed down from mothers to daughters. Kwali learnt the secrets of the craft from her aunt, picking up techniques that had hardly changed in thousands of years.
This pottery tradition wasn’t just Gbagyi. It is connected to a much older Nigerian ceramic heritage, dating back to the ancient Nok civilisation. Women gathered local clay with simple tools, sorted it by hand, and slowly shaped it into pots that kept village life running. The method sounds simple, rolling clay into long coils and stacking them up to build each vessel, but it took years to master.
Kwali’s work stood out right away. She has a natural sense of shape and balance. She starts with a lump of clay on a round base made from calabash skin, pounding it into a bowl shape with her fist. Working while standing, she circled the pot as it grew, pulling the clay upward, adding more coils inside, and shaping each piece until it had just the right height and width. People noticed the precision in her pots, the perfect lines, and the elegant feel.
The Art of Decoration
What really set Kwali apart, even early on, was her way with decoration. She didn’t just make pots; she turned them into art. Using simple tools, a knife and wooden roulettes, which are notched cylinders, she carved and stamped the surfaces with detailed designs. Her inspiration came straight from the world around her: scorpions, lizards, snakes, chameleons, birds, and fish. These animals crept and swam across her water jars, cooking pots, bowls, and flasks.
Her patterns weren’t just for show. The geometric lines and animal shapes held deeper meaning in Gbagyi culture. Some researchers believe her designs echoed the tattoos worn by Gbagyi women, tying the art to personal identity and tradition. She will outline figures on the clay, then roll the roulette over them, creating bands or panels that give each pot a sense of rhythm and life.
Her younger brother, Mallam Mekaniki Kyebese, remembered that Kwali’s talent showed up early. People loved her pots so much that they were often sold out before she even reached the market. Like other Gbagyi potters, she fired her early pieces in open bonfires made from dry plants and wood. This old-school method gave her pottery those warm, earthy colours you see in low-fired clay.
Kwali’s journey started with tradition, but her hands and imagination took it somewhere entirely new.
A Fateful Encounter
Kwali’s life took a sharp turn in 1950. Michael Cardew, a British potter working for the colonial Nigerian government, spotted some of her pots at the palace of the Emir of Abuja, Alhaji Suleiman Barau. The Emir had picked them up for his collection, but it was Cardew who really saw something special. Her work, elegant, striking, and unmistakably skilled, stopped him in his tracks.
Cardew wasn’t just any potter. He studied under Bernard Leach at St Ives Pottery, that famous studio down in Cornwall. When he landed in Nigeria, his goal was clear: open a pottery training centre and introduce local artisans to Western studio techniques. By 1952, he set up the Abuja Pottery Training Centre in Suleja (then called Abuja), aiming to blend African and European ceramic traditions. The centre taught wheel throwing, glazing, and high-temperature kiln firing, methods that were a world away from what Nigerian potters usually did.
Kwali joined the centre in 1954 and instantly made history as its first female potter. That was a big deal, since the centre mainly admitted men, even though, in Gbagyi culture, women traditionally made pottery. Kwali challenged that divide, and soon, other women started following her lead. At the centre, she picked up new skills: wheel throwing, mixing and applying glazes, working with slips, firing in modern kilns, and even making saggars, those protective clay boxes for firing delicate pieces.
But what really came out of her time there was something new, a blend, not strictly traditional or Western, but a real mix that honoured both roots. Sure, she learnt the wheel from Cardew, but she never gave up handbuilding. She still coiled her pots, just as she had as a child; only now she used stoneware clay tough enough to handle the heat of the new kilns.
Her decorations stayed true to Gbagyi tradition, but she adapted them, experimenting with new techniques. She developed her own way with sgraffito: dipping her pots in red or white slip, then scratching her patterns through the surface to reveal the clay beneath. Lady Kwali used porcupine quills for delicate details; her precision was unparalleled. She will fill the incised lines with white kaolin and feldspar slip, which glow pale green under a translucent celadon glaze once fired. The result? Her pots shimmered with contrast and depth.
A classic Kwali pot from this era was hand-built, coiled in stoneware, decorated with her trademark lizard motifs, and finished with a deep, shiny glaze. Western collectors and gallery-goers saw these works as something powerful: African art, alive and authentic, yet shaped with modern ceramic techniques. They retained the sculptural strength and cultural meaning of Gbagyi pottery while adding the polish and durability of studio ceramics.
But, you know, there was a catch. The pots Kwali once made for daily life, keeping water cool, storing grain, and serving food, had turned into art objects meant for display. The new firing methods made them heavy and watertight, no longer fit for their old uses. In the process, maybe without even planning it, Kwali became a pioneer of African ceramic art modernism. Her work reached people far beyond her community while remaining deeply rooted in her traditions.
International Recognition
Cardew saw right away that Kwali was something special. He made it his mission to get her work out there in the world. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, her pottery garnered attention at significant international exhibitions. London’s Berkeley Galleries showed off Abuja pottery in ’58, ’59, and again in ’62, and people really noticed Kwali’s pieces. When Nigeria celebrated independence in October 1960, its work took centre stage; suddenly, traditional Nigerian craft was a big part of the country’s new identity.
In 1961, Kwali travelled to Britain and gave live demonstrations at venues such as the Royal College of Art in Farnham and Wenford Bridge. Crowds watched her build pots entirely by hand, every movement sure and efficient, the clay taking shape under her fingers, no potter’s wheel in sight. She did the same in France and Germany, showing European audiences pottery techniques that were older than many of their traditions.
Her tours kept growing. In 1972, she headed to America with Cardew. Wherever she went, people respected her skill. She could shape beautiful, consistent vessels with just her hands, a wooden paddle, and a few simple tools. Watching her work made people rethink their ideas about what was “primitive” or “advanced” in pottery. It was clear that African craftsmanship had its own deep sophistication.
Honours and Legacy
Recognition came from all over. In 1962, Kwali received an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for her work and her role in connecting British and Nigerian cultures. The German porcelain company Rosenthal sponsored her demonstration tour of Rome and several German cities the following year, thereby expanding her reach in Europe.
Her large water jar won the silver prize at the Tenth International Exhibition of Ceramic Art in Washington in 1965, and the Smithsonian Institution snapped it up for its collection. In 1977, Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria awarded her an honorary doctorate, a remarkable honour for someone who had never attended formal school. Then, in 1980, she received the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award, the country’s highest academic honour. The following year, she became an Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON).
But the most striking tribute is her portrait on the back of Nigeria’s 20-naira note. She’s still the only woman to appear on Nigerian currency. The image depicts her completely immersed in her craft, her hands in the clay. Streets in Abuja and Niger State carry her name. The Sheraton Hotel in Abuja even has the Kwali Convention Centre, one of the city’s main conference spots.
The Question of Colonial Context
You can’t really talk about Kwali’s rise without looking at the bigger colonial picture. Cardew came to Nigeria as part of the colonial administration, which aimed to “modernise” African industries. His whole project started with the idea that Nigerian pottery needed a European upgrade, even though Gbagyi pottery was already sophisticated and ideally suited to local life.
Scholars point out that Cardew’s approach reflected the colonial attitudes of his time. He assumed Africans needed to follow a European path to progress rather than finding their own way. Even the Abuja Pottery Training Centre, though it created real chances for potters like Kwali, had its problems. Initially, it excluded women, even though they were the primary keepers of the tradition, and it assessed success based on Western concepts such as profit and international fame rather than cultural or practical value.
But even with all these limits, Kwali found her own way. She never gave up the hand-building methods of her culture, even as Cardew taught wheel-throwing. Instead, she merged her traditional skills with new ideas, making her own unique style. Her fame didn’t come from dropping Gbagyi techniques; it came from how brilliantly she adapted and expanded them. In the end, her story is about negotiation and persistence: holding on to her heritage while showing the world what it could do.
The Transformation of Craft
Kwali’s narrative situates itself amidst the ongoing debates about the boundaries between craft and fine art. In Western art circles, ceramics used to get lumped in with craftsโ stuff you use every day, made by skilled hands but not “real” artists. However, Kwali’s work defied this classification. People in Nigeria and elsewhere began to see her as an artist rather than just a craftswoman. Her pots made their way from local markets and royal homes to big-name museums like the British Museum, the V&A, the Smithsonian, and Aberystwyth University’s ceramics gallery.
This wasn’t just about Kwali; it showed a shift in how people viewed African art and ceramics in general. The studio pottery movement, of which Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew were part, had already begun to blur the line between pottery and art in the West. Kwali’s pieces took that even further. She showed everyone that hand-built pots could be just as refined and thought-provoking as anything made by a “genius” artist in Europe. Her work had the kind of presence and depth that made curators and art historians sit up and take notice.
Kwali began in a tradition in which women made pots mainly for daily use. But her work ended up as “art objects” in glass cases, collected, catalogued, and studied. It’s a complicated shift. On one hand, it’s a tremendous recognition, not just for her, but for the Gbagyi culture she came from. On the other hand, it separated her pottery from its roots, turning things meant for cooking or carrying water into something people just looked at.
Teaching and Influence
Kwali didn’t just make remarkable pots; she taught others to do the same. At the Abuja Pottery Training Centre, she passed her skills to a new generation. Her example encouraged more women to participate, leading to the establishment of a new centre, Dakin Gwari, in Abuja in 1965, which women ran entirely. Kwali inspired.
Later, she took her teaching to Ahmadu Bello University as a part-time lecturer. Here, she didn’t just teach technique; she passed on a way of thinking about pottery that valued tradition but welcomed new ideas. Her students saw a true master at work. She understood clay in a way that’s hard to explain; she could turn a lump of earth into something beautiful, almost as if it were second nature.
In the early 1980s, the pottery centre was renamed Kwali Pottery in her honour. That was a nod to how much she has done to put both the Centre and Nigerian pottery on the world’s radar. Sadly, after her death, the place fell into neglect by the 1990s. But people haven’t forgotten about it; there are plans, including a World Bank-backed project announced in 2021, to bring it back to life.
Enduring Resonance
Kwali died on August 12, 1984, in Minna, Niger State. She was about 59. Her death closed the chapter on a remarkable personal journey, but her influence hasn’t faded. Her pots are still out there in major collections, studied by artists, historians, and anyone caught up in the conversation between old traditions and changing modern worlds.
In 2022, the exhibition “Body Vessel Clay: Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art” at Two Temple Place and York Art Gallery in London put Kwali at the heart of a story about 70 years of Black women’s ceramic art. Curated by Dr. Jareh Das, the show traced her influence on younger artists, including Magdalene Odundo, who met Kwali at the Abuja Centre in 1974.
Kwali’s legacy stretches beyond individual artists. Her life raises big questions about how culture survives and changes after colonialism. She proved that traditional skills don’t have to disappear or become watered down; they can grow and adapt. Hand-building, passed between women for generations, could stand up to anything made in the West. The patterns and animal shapes she used, rooted in rural Nigeria, spoke just as powerfully to people on the other side of the world.
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The Persistence of Memory
Pick up a 20-naira note in Nigeria, and there’s Kwali, right there, hands deep in clay, lost in her work. It’s not just a portrait. It’s a quiet shout in a place where people have too often ignored or brushed aside the impact of women, especially in culture and economics. Kwali isn’t just a face on money; she’s proof of what African women artists can do when given space to create, innovate, and be seen.
Her pots, some locked away in museums, others living on in old photos or stories, capture this crossroads in time. You see that moment when colonial rule threw old and new together, when everyday objects stopped being just useful and started being called art. Her talent unlocked doors that had remained closed for generations. Those pots remind us: culture isn’t frozen in time. It breathes, shifts, and keeps finding new shapes.
Thinking about Kwali makes you stop and ask: Who decides what’s “real” art, anyway? Who gets to say which stories matter? When local crafts end up in global galleries and markets, what do we win, and what slips away? These are not old questions. They hit even harder now, in a world where culture bounces around faster than ever.
Conclusion
Kwali changed how people viewed Nigerian pottery. She linked old and new, carried tradition forward, and refused to pick just one path. She honoured where she came from, but she never stopped reaching for fresh ideas.
Her hands, steady, practised, and caked with clay, were shaped more than pots. Every vessel meant something different. They worked in Gbagyi homes, but they also held their own on gallery pedestals. Also, they showed off Nigeria to the world. They helped keep a pottery school running. They taught and inspired anyone watching. In the end, they are just the purest proof of her gift: turning earth into beauty, one careful touch at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Who was Ladi Kwali?
Kwali was a Nigerian potter, born around 1925 in Kwali, Northern Nigeria. She made a name for herself by blending Gbagyi pottery traditions with modern techniques.
2. What made her pottery stand out?
She took hand-built coiling, decorated her pots with bold geometric patterns and animal designs, then finished them off with modern glazing. The result? Her work caught people’s eyes far beyond Nigeria.
3. How did she become known around the world?
British potter Michael Cardew discovered her talent. Thanks to him, her pieces ended up in galleries all over the world, and she travelled through Europe and America, showing people how she worked.
4. Why is she on Nigerian money?
You will discover her face on the 20-naira note. It’s Nigeria’s way of honouring the role she played in the country’s art and in putting traditional pottery on the world map.
5. What did she leave behind?
Kwali inspired countless potters after her. She helped modernise African ceramics and ensured the world recognised the value of traditional techniques. Her influence still lives on.
