On holiday what do most people do, visit a pottery community of course.
Essaouira is a coastal town 176 kilometers from Marrakesh and Safi is 121 kilometers north from there. The only way to get there was in a taxi, the road follows coast, miles of beautiful beach crying out for surfers, there was only one small resort for them oddly called Saouira.
We rode through the desert on a taxi with no name it felt good to be out of the rain and enjoying 20 something centigrade heat. After driving through a huge petrol refinery, we arrived in Safi a more workaday town than Essaouira .
We walked through the main street with showrooms and workshops either side, when we were accosted by an older man who insisted we went with him to to his ‘ artisan’ workshop. We followed up some stairs and along one of the upper ways where he opened up his very small workshop, he was very nice and insisted that I had a go. Dentistry is not very good in Morocco for poor folk, his front teeth often fell out as he smiled so much, sadly I never did get his name. He showed us his two kilns the last firing of which for twenty years ago, they use electric ‘ ovens ‘ now.
The kilns were very basic updraught type one stoke hole and many flues. they were rounded cones and had really big chimney flues. He gave me some clay to take home and I have made a slip with it. There were about 20 kilns in the area none of which is used.
Moroccans use tagines a lot and still use charcoal chaffing dishes used since medieval times or before , and the market for unglazed wares was very busy everywhere we went, garden pots to cooking dishes with terrasig slips.
Looking across the valley it was easy to visualize how it would have been, when the ovens were working and with local people buying their pots for everyday usage before the days of metal and aluminium.
Whitecroft Pottery 