Burundi · Ceramics

Burundian Batwa Colombina Coil-Built Pottery

Colombina (the specific coil-building technique name documented for this craft)

The gendered, coil-built (colombina technique) production of unglazed clay cooking pots by Batwa women of Burundi, a tradition dating back thousands of years and directly parallel to, yet distinct in specific documented process detail from, Batwa pottery practice in neighboring Rwanda (see CRAFT-2572). Labor is strictly gender-divided: men are responsible for the physically demanding extraction and transport of clay from wetlands located across the hills from the village, while women perform all subsequent stages. Clay is mixed with sand and trampled with the heel, a task sometimes accompanied by rhythmic singing timed to the heel-work to ease the labor; the potter then builds the vessel using the colombina (coil) method, superimposing chunks of clay and joining them with a spatula -- typically a shaped piece of gourd. While the clay remains wet, the pot's exterior walls are decorated by pressing a small braid of rush into the surface. Finished pots are piled on a bed of sticks, stones, and fragments of older pottery, covered with dry grass, and fired for one to two hours, with the interior fired first, followed by the exterior, using only grasses and twigs as fuel; the potter removes each fired pot from the kiln bed with a long pole and sprinkles it with a mixture of water and ash. The finished pots are carefully packed and carried to market by head the following day -- documented at Ruyigi Province's local market in eastern Burundi, where a pot of typical size sold for approximately twenty-five cents. The craft's traditional clay source is directly and specifically threatened by wetland reclamation for rice production, which is rapidly removing the wetlands potters have historically depended upon.

Risk level: Endangered · Not independently inscribed