Container for Valuables

Among the Gur-speaking peoples, potters use the direct pull method, pushing into a lump of clay to form the pot’s base and pulling upward while rotating the mass to form the walls. They then scrape the clay to consolidate it and to perfect the form. Elegant, round-bodied containers such as this one, which feature a lid cut seamlessly from the body and a flared topknot that acts as a handle, are made by many Gur-speaking peoples and are intended to hold valuables. On this container, the widest expanse and the outline of the lid are accentuated by bands of three or four thinly incised lines highlighted with kaolin; this form of decoration is typical of pots made in northern Ghana and just across the border in Burkina Faso. [See also 2005.229].