Born in 1925, in Kwali, Northern Nigeria, Ladi Kwali was a Nigerian Potter. She was born and raised in an area where pottery was an indigenous female tradition, she was taught to make pottery as a child by her aunt using the traditional method of coiling.
In her early years of practice, Ladi Kwali created pottery pieces that were influenced by the Gbagyi tradition, with emphasis on personal idioms. Her pieces have some mathematical quality which can be seen in the display of symmetry in her works.
In 1954, Ladi Kwali became the first female potter at the Pottery Training Centre (later known as the Ladi Kwali Pottery Centre in the early 1980s) in Suleja, which was established in April 1952 by Micheal Cardew, former Pottery Officer at the Department of Commerce and Industry in the colonial Nigerian Government. At the centre, she learned wheel throwing, glazing, kiln firing, production of saggars, and the use of slip, she eventually became an Instructor and by 1965, the centre had four addition women.
The typical Ladi Kwali pot was coiled in a stoneware clay, decorated with lizard patterns and fired with a dark shiny glaze, this glaze became known as a symbol for the pots Africanness to Western art enthusiasts.
Ladi Kwali's pots were featured in international exhibitions of Abuja pottery in 1958, 1959, and 1962, organised by Cardew. Kwali gave demonstrations at the Royal College, Farnham, and Wenford Bridge in Great Britain, as well as in France and Germany in 1961. She toured America with Cardew in 1972.
Her pots were noted for their beauty of form and decoration, several were acquired by the Emir of Abuja, Alhaji Suleiman Barau, in whose home they were seen by Michael Cardew in 1950.
Ladi Kwali’s picture appears on the back of the Nigerian 20 naira bill. She died in 1984.
