Michael Cardew

Michael Ambrose Cardew CBE (1901–1983), was an English studio potter who worked in West Africa for twenty years.

Cardew aimed to make pottery in the seventeenth century English slipware tradition, functional and affordable by people with moderate incomes.

Charlie Tustin joined the team in 1935 followed in 1936 by Ray Finch (potter), who bought the pottery from Cardew and worked there until he died in 2012.

Although Cardew's main motivation for taking the post was financial, he had become convinced (partly through his reading of Marx) that there should be a closer relationship between the studio potter and industry.

The Colonial Office adopted instead a policy developing indigenous industries and eventually accepted Meyerowitz's idea.

They agreed to fund the Achimota pottery, which they intended should become profitable, and hired Cardew to build and manage it in nearby Alajo.

He records in his autobiography his obsession to prove to the colonial administrators "that they were wrong to close down Alajo, and that a small pottery in a village would be successful in every way, provided it was allowed to develop naturally.

"[4] He struggled with difficult clay and kiln failures for three years and later judged the Vumë pottery to have been unsuccessful, but its products are among his most highly regarded pots.

[9] His trainees were mainly Hausa and Gwari men, but he spotted the pots of Ladi Kwali and in 1954 she became the first woman potter at the Training Centre, soon followed by other women.

[citation needed] Through Cardew's contact with Ivan McMeekin, in 1968 he was invited by the University of New South Wales to spend six months in the Northern Territory of Australia introducing pottery to indigenous Australians.

[10] Several of Cardew's former apprentices went on to become studio potters including Svend Bayer, Clive Bowen, Michael OBrien, and Danlami Aliyu.