From the archive
From the archive: Kisii pottery in the making, c. 1940s
6 November 2026
A colonial-era photograph in the UK National Archives captures a Kisii potter at work — evidence of a craft now nearly gone.
Among the thousands of photographs in the UK National Archives' Colonial Office collection is one catalogued simply: "Nyanza Province. Kisii Pottery in the making. The Kisii are a virile Bantu tribe, living in the South of the Nyanza Province." Taken in the 1940s or 50s, it shows a potter mid-work — coil-building a vessel by hand, as Gusii women had done for generations.
The colonial caption is of its time, but the image itself is precious: visual proof that pottery was an established, recognised local industry, recorded by outsiders who found it worth photographing. Clay was dug locally, tempered, coiled without a wheel, and fired in the open air.
Aluminium and enamel ware displaced domestic pottery in the later twentieth century, and few potters still practise. Our pottery collection uses this photograph to anchor objects like the enyungu (cooking pot) in living memory — and we are actively seeking Kisii families who kept their grandmothers' pots. If yours did, talk to us.
Image: The National Archives (UK), catalogue CO 1069-137-87 — Open Government Licence.