Michael Cardew

Cardew made slipware for ordinary kitchens at Winchcombe in the Cotswolds, generous jugs and dishes trailed with honey-coloured slip, and then moved to West Africa and switched to high-fired stoneware. As the colonial government's pottery officer he founded the Abuja Pottery Training Centre in northern Nigeria in 1952, where trainees combined local hand-building traditions with the wheel and glazes. Its most famous potter was Ladi Kwali. Look at the bellied, robust forms in both phases: Cardew valued vigour over polish, and his book Pioneer Pottery became a manual for potters worldwide.