October saw a busy schedule of events at the Crafts Study Centre (CSC), including two events that accompanied the current exhibition Open (until August 2025) and coincided with both Black History Month and Farnham Craft Month festivals.

The first of these at the Farnham Maltings on the 10th October was the panel discussion - ‘Siddig el Nigoumi: A Farnham Potter’ - between Director of the CSC, Stephen Knott, Vicki Nigoumi and James Fordham of Oxford Ceramics Gallery. The event provided the opportunity to discuss Nigoumi’s cross-cultural career, from his upbringing, education and training in calligraphy in Sudan to his time as a ceramic student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and as a teacher at the West Surrey College of Art and Design (WSCAD) in Farnham from the late 1960s. Vicki and James built a picture of a modest, technically gifted and inquisitive potter who occupied a distinct position within the field of studio ceramics. The knowledgeable audience, some of whom were taught by Nigoumi added their own reflections on his career, including one former student’s memory of how Nigoumi encouraged them in one workshop to experiment with uses of salad cream in making their ceramics. Attendees were also treated to an impromptu exhibition of Nigoumi dishes, figurines and a vernacular wooden Sudanese gadah (a communal eating bowl) kindly brought by Vicki to the event.

The following week on October 15th, Dierdre Figueiredo, Director of Craftspace in Birmingham, gave a erudite and personal response to the material surrounding Ladi Kwali’s tour of US Universities in 1972. The material, collated from Michael Cardew’s archive held at the CSC, consists of photographs, posters, letters and newspaper reports relating to Kwali’s pottery demonstrations; performances of the Gwari potter coiling and hand-decorating pots in front of university audiences from across the United States, interpreted by Cardew and assisted by Kwali’s fellow Nigerian, Kofi Athey. Their schedule was gruelling, and interpretations of Kwali’s mesmerising skill by the elderly, white Cardew did not always curry favour with audiences sometimes perplexed by the presence of African craft on campuses at the time of heightened civil rights activism. In other contexts, however, the tour served to unify communities affected by racist violence, as Figueiredo pointed out with reference to material from the University of North Carolina. The material in the exhibition sits alongside a demonstration pot that Kwali made during an earlier tour to WSCAD in Farnham in 1962 that was arranged by the then head of ceramics Henry Hammond. The rich material makes it possible to open up the global interconnections that were a key narrative of twentieth century studio craft.

Thank you to the University for the Creative Arts for providing the Knowledge Exchange funding that enabled these events to take place. Thank you too for Farnham Maltings in their help in supporting ‘Siddig el Nigoumi: A Farnham Potter’.