Production of Ceramic Wares with Idea Development from Shells to Promote Femininity in Ghanaian Pottery

Abstract

Ghanaian pottery practices and their modern reintroduction have been rendered masculine especially in tertiary institutions. Feminine participation in contemporary Ghanaian pottery/ceramic practices is virtually non-existent. The study believed women’s participation had contributions to make to pottery practices, and hence advocated the employment of feminine subjectivities and traditional spaces as well as indigenous pottery trade strategies and other feminine idiom within contemporary studio practices as means to rescue the stagnating practices and involve womanhood in the evolution of ceramic art at tertiary levels. ‘Modelling’ and ‘throwing’ were the main studio forming methods employed to produce crockery in the study. Materials used included; Abonko and Mfensi clays, manganese and glaze. Again, the study explored means and bases for feminine inclusion, especially in contemporary and academic pottery practices as means of normalising an anomaly engendered by maternity. It concluded among others that, pottery practices in their modernist sense had been trapped in sculpture representations and it was only through the use of feminine idioms and subjectivities that they ought to be freed to their full meanings as art. It was recommended with others that, female students would be given the chance to develop concepts that would depict their inner values and beliefs in their wares.