The language of clay

As a translator, I’m passionate about languages. I love the challenge. I love discovering the connections among them and therefore, amongst the cultures they build.

People often think that translating is a mere — and easy — conversion of words from one language into another. A transaction. Anyone who speaks both the source and the target languages could do it. Why the fuss? And so it has remained an undervalued, hidden artistic practice. Did I say ‘artistic’? Yes. Translation, I strongly believe, is an art.

Learning a language goes beyond the words, the phonetics, the alphabets. The beauty of learning a language lies in discovering the way of seeing the world that accompanies it, that shapes it and makes it evolve. One travels into a new dimension. One’s own world broadens. All that cultural wealth. All through a language.

And sometimes a language is a material, a practice, a craft.

During my time in Morocco with Mama Aïcha in 2019 I discovered the beauty of learning to make pottery without language as a mediator. We didn’t speak the same language. She worked. We observed. We repeated. Just like children do when they are growing up. The spelling — its intellectualisation — comes afterwards.

I love reading a list of presents my niece wrote many years ago which my mum keeps on the fridge door. It’s half in English, half in Spanish. The Spanish words she knew (croquettes) and the English ones (shoes, everything) spelt as she imagined they would, as she had heard them: crocetas, shooese, evreething.

And so we learnt to make in Ain Bouckrik.

So when I was planning a trip to Tanou Sakassou in Ivory Coast in November last year I didn’t worry much about the verbal language barriers. French and Baulé. Because I was doing research and I wanted to ‘properly’ talk to people, I got an interpreter. But his help was irrelevant and I consciously ignored it or didn’t request it when it was time to make. Time to observe. Time to speak in the language of potters. Hands in clay.

Akissi Hélène is the current president of the Pottery Cooperative in Tanou. Started in 1986 by Koua Aya following the advice of members of the French Cooperation and the local government, it still is a thriving pottery haven, now mostly populated by men of different ages.

Koua Aya had been spotted in Abidjan, selling her pots, with which she would have travelled for hours from Tanou — 352 km away from the capital. If she wanted to continue her practice, she was recommended, she needed to create a cooperative. So she did. For years she was only joined by women. Akissi was the second member to join; 10 more followed her.

As the boss now, the woman in charge, Akissi took me under her wing during my first days.

Two small wooden stools.
One opposite the other.
A turning wheel in between us.
A ball of clay. Her hands.
And the class started.
We both were fluent in our common language and so the conversation flowed.
A bit of French for some keywords I wanted to learn. Otherwise, all fingertips, shaping; holding tools in very specific ways. Clay and water and a piece of pagne (fabric) to smoothen the rims.

She made one.
My eyes peeled, fixed on the choreography of her hands and her growing pot.
She started the second one. One step in her hands; then in mine. She observed and if I did something wrong, she would take over. Step by step, we made a pot together.

Et maintenant, toi toute seule.

Ok, I got it.
When I wanted approval before moving into the next step, I would look at her with questioning eyes - c’est OK?
Oui.
When I wasn’t sure as to what was coming next, I would mix French, hand movements and sounds.
Et maintenant… grr, grr, grr?
She would nod.
Oui ou non.

That was all I needed.
That was all I wanted.

A woman whose hands carry the wisdom of generations of potters. Just like a language teacher is passing on a culture and a history with her words. Without it, the language makes no sense.

And that’s perhaps what I love the most about being a potter and about travelling to different pottery communities. Through the language we share, I can learn about who they are, who they were and who I can be as a holder of all that knowledge, aware of all those traditions. Part of that lineage of potters and, above all, human beings.

More importantly, thanks to the languages we speak, we can feel at home in those places where we see we fit in — verbally and culturally. Regardless of the words we speak, I continuously experience a sense of home surrounded by potters, making.

Speaking in clay. Communicating with our hands.