Beer Pot

Item number 3620/2 from the MOA: University of British Columbia.

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Description

Round, burnished, black pot with a snake-like pattern around the shoulders. The design is outlined by raised welts and is filled with vertical incised lines. The form is globular, tapering to a flat circular base. The pot has a wide circular mouth.

History Of Use

Beer drinking pot; usually made by women. The beverage, utshwala, is traditionally used in communal ceremonies to contact ancestor spirits. The first drinker is a woman, to ensure that it is brewed properly, and the second is the male head of the household. Afterwards it was passed around to the other men; men and women drank separately. The ceramic pots that store the beer (izinkamba or ukhamba), would traditionally be kept on the floor so the Amadlozi (ancestor spirits), always have access.

Specific Techniques

Drinking vessels (ukhamba) are made out of a finer clay than the fermentation vessels (imbiza). They are made with a coiling technique, e.g., starting at the base: a large lump of clay is molded by hand, then rolls of clay rings build up the walls, that are pinched together by hand, and then smoothed with a piece of calabash rind. Another method has the walls built first; clay is added, working it into the body of the pot, and then smoothed out with a bauhinia creeper seed pod. The rims of pots are made out of a thin roll of clay, smoothed with wet leather; the pot is dried for a few days, inverted, and then the base is filled with additional pieces of clay. Decorations were added by either carving into hard clay or by adding to the wet clay to create a raised design.

Narrative

Burnished clay vessel made by Mrs. Masonto, in the 1960s or 1970s, in the Nkwalini Valley area of KwaZulu/Natal province. The pots (3620/1-6) were collected by Robert Robinson in 1994 in the Umlazi area. Felix Fohom purchased the pots from Robinson for his brother, Richard Tchuemegne, to sell to MOA.