Ghana ★ Travel & Work & Portraits Clare Brett Smith
Connecting with Ghana’s artisans, traveling to their villages, working on production and design ideas
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with them, becoming friends, made travel in Ghana a rich experience. This is how Ghana seemed to me twenty-four years ago. C.B.S. April 2012
GHANA Map courtesy of Google, with some of my additions. I couldn’t place the important craft villages in the Ashanti region all around Kumasi, Ampobame,Tewobabi, Bonwire and Foase, because the roads that lead to them are not shown. Atlantic Ocean
Gulf of Guinea
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GHANA ★ Travel & Work & Portraits an Aid to Artisans Project, 1988 - 1994
Text and Photographs by Clare Brett Smith All rights reserved Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: ISBN 978-0-578-10398-3 Copyright © 2012 by Clare Brett Smith
Some of the photographs were previously shown at the National Arts Club, New York City, in The Hand and the Eye, a one-man photographic show, and at the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island Clare Brett Smith 80 Mountain Spring Road, Farmington, Connecticut, 06032 ,USA United States of America
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GHANA ★ Travel & Work & Portraits
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GHANA ★ Travel & Work & Portraits The history of West Africa, its colonies (British, Dutch, French and Portuguese), slavery, education, the character and variety of the tribes, the wide rivers, forests, grasslands and near desert - all of it fascinating, but it was the people that made Ghana so special for me. Although the Ashanti people were known as ferocious warriors, I remember thinking, when I first met Ghanaians, that they were surely the kindest people on earth, with soft calm voices and wide white smiles. I decided right then that, if reincarnation were possible, I would like to show up in Ghana.
As Aid to Artisans, we
visited Ghana many times during the 80s and 90s, developed a successful craft export program based on the rich traditional arts and culture and, at the end, under the inspired leadership of the late Esther Ocloo, Ghanaians paid us the compliment of starting their own Aid to Artisan Ghana (ATAG). Now, almost 25 years later, ATAG is still a strong force for improving the lives and prospects of Ghana’s many talented artisans. (Its website is www.atagh.org)
This is how it began: A young woman. leaning on her kitchen wall in the village of Peki Dzake one evening, smiled as Burge and I walked out after supper “May we know you?” she asked in a gentle voice. Who wouldn’t feel welcome?
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Clare Brett Smith, April, 2012
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Every woman wears three cloths, one for a headwrap, one for the baby and one for a skirt 6
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The children are beautiful
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Life in the villages was simple. 13
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Style comes naturally to this young man.
In Accra ,young man with style and attitude, a good basket maker too.
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Education is widespread, based on the British legacy. Independence from Britain in 1957 did not change that and literacy is high.
Family life is sweet and strong.
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The Chief in Tewobabi
In Tamale
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Women in the Northern Region were somewhat suspicious of us.
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Pounding Fufu, a staple, cooked from cassava , usuallly topped with a peppery sauce.
Traditional Hearth
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Kitchen in Peki Dzake
Hearth in Ampobame 25
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Accra
Ping Pong in Accra
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Antique carved and painted colonial figures give an idea of the way foreigners were seen.
Red and black are the proper colors for a funeral.
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At a funeral in Kumasi, the capitol of the Ashanti region
An Ashanti chief will always be followed by his umbrella carrier
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Coffins can be ordered to match the occupation of the deceased, here a yellow pod for a Cacao farmer 32
An Ashanti Chief with a toy pistol. I have no idea what the joke was. 33
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Near Bolgatanga in the Northern Region
In the same marketplace near Bolgatanga 35
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Red peppers drying near Tamale 37
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I sent this Tamale policewoman a copy of her photograph, and was surprised and delighted to hear from her, many months later, as I had only Tamale as her address.
Looking through the thick wall of Fort Elmina, Cape Coast, once a debarkation point for the slave trade
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Gun emplacements at Fort Elmina. 40
Beachfront restaurant, near Accra
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On the beach near Accra, exercising polo ponies 42
Cape Coast 43
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Lake Volta in eastern Ghana, is a huge man-made lake. 250 miles long. Its Akosombo Dam supplies electric power to most of Ghana. The biggest user is an aluminum smelter in Tema, a major port just east of Accra.
Casting for a fish called “one man thousand�, a fish so small they say it takes 1,000 to feed a man. Lake Volta
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GHANA’S ARTISANS Aid to Artisans’ assignment in Ghana was to expand and develop traditional crafts for export. Pottery was one of the first we chose as it is made by women and women’s income generating projects, especially in rural areas, were few. These large traditional pots are used for food or for palm wine and are made without lids. In the ATA workshop ATA’s consultant persuaded the women to make smaller jars with lids. Only when he showed them their own prized English bone china sugar jar - with its rosebud lid would they agree that a lid might be worth making. Their final lid, more in the shape of a Fulani tribal gold earring than a British rosebud, was so successful that even the potters admired it, and the finished pot became a popular export.
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WOOD Tropical rainforests are fast disappearing in West Africa.
One preserve is Ghana’s
Kakum National Park, where treetop walks for visitors have been erected and rangers trained to explain the value of forests for climate, as well as for such specialty byproducts as medicines. Illegal logging has been a serious problem for years, but the government now has reforestation programs and incentives for forest products, but, still, like everywhere else in the world, forests are threatened. Ghana’s wood carvers, luckily have minimal effect.
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An old dugout hollowed from a single huge tree trunk, Tema
Paddles, Tema
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Wood Carver in Foase
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METAL WORK Metal workers in Krofofrom use the lost wax casting method, making wax models, encasing them in a mold of charcoal and clay, burning out the wax from the
mold, and filling the void
with melted brass from old faucets, car radiators, whatever they can scavenge. They were very skilled in the Ashanti tradition of goldweights. (Ghana was once known a s the Gold Coa st. ) Because there was a fad in the U.S. for votives, they made many versions, some like the one at left, as well as popular napkin rings.
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equally
Above, ATA’s Holland Millis works with me and with Danso, a master craftsman, and, right, with Phyllis Woods, a U.S. jewelry designer for whom Danso made Ashanti symbols for her necklaces and bracelets.
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Molds ready to be fired
Pumpmg the bellows, the “lead singer”, left, is like a boat’s coxswain, he sets the rhythm for the crew .
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Danso’s nephew, his apprentice, made the wax crocodile model which was cast as a brass napkin ring.
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Master metalsmith, Danso in foreground 64
A doorway that lets people in and out but not goats 65
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The face on the napkin ring is startlingly like the face of an Ashanti man in the picture opposite and the cyclist on the next page too.
He was a weaver in the Kente weaving town called Bonwire, also in the Kumasi region 67
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Brass cyclist by master craftsman, IsaacMensah, and, in the background, a black and silver Adinkra cloth.
Textiles Kente Cloth is a specialty of Ghanaian weavers and is woven in narrow strips and sewn together to make ceremonial robes. (In the U.S. many African American clergymen now wear kente cloth stoles.) Really fine old Kente was often made with silk threads; today it is more likely to be rayon. The pieces at right are not of high quality but typical of tourist goods.
Adinkra is a printed cloth, made of handspun, handwoven cotton strips. The prints are symbolic and each is carved from hard-shelled gourds, dipped into a black resin and pressed onto cloth like a block print. Men do the weaving in Ghana. It’s an honored occupation, although women sometimes weave utility cloths. Already highly valued by Ghanaians at home and abroad, ATA did not interfere with this very traditional production.
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A seamstress can move from house to house as these sewing machines are foot-pedal operated, not electric.
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Another form of textile, making and mending fishing nets
Finished Adinkra cloth outside the workshop of Chief Nana Kwaka Duah II, in Tewobabi
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Chief Nana Kwaka Duah II is a well known textile designer and producer. His son, holding the umbrella, would normally and properly have bare shoulders.. 74
Kente weaver and his family in Bonwire 75
Regalia for a chief in a specialty shop, these are cermonial staffs. 76
Sewn onto a robe, these pockets, some leather, some embroidered cloth, contain various powders and plants, charms to bring good luck and fend off evil. 77
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The lady, wearing a commercial waxprint, was choosing a gift in the Accra market. Modern Kente cloth in the foregound and Adinkra at right.
We were often objects of curiosity
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Color coordination in the furniture store
In the Bolgatanga market, sheep and handwoven cotton triangular “pants� worn by men under their tunics.
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Hats serve as sun shades in Bolgatanga 82
Beads Beads made from recycled glass have long been a form of currency as well as jewelry in West Africa. Bottles are pounded into fine dust in a metal canister, then sifted into molds. The colors carefully sifted in place, and the molds go into a wood fired oven. The glass is not completely melted, only enough to fuse the powder. An ATA donor wanted to ease the labor of the artisans and offered a mechanical glass crusher. It was not popular with the atisans because it did away with too many jobs and, also there was a problem as to where, and on whose property, the crusher would be placed. (Sometimes, as in the days of Luddite rebellions in England, a technical advance has unwelcome consequences).
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Sifting the glass powder into molds
Fusing the glass
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Final polishing of the beads
A Necklace (my own), by Phyllis Woods using Tetteh’s powder-glass beads and Danso’s brass coils which she gold-plated later at her Studio, Tribalinks, in Arizona.
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Whenever we stopped, an entrepreneur popped up at the car window. 88
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Not so appealing, these were ordinary rodents, not the delicacy known as “grasscutters”, or “small small beef”. I don’t knowwhat these were, but they were said to be edible.
This book is a belated thank you (almost 25 years late), with admiration and affection for the strength, hard work and good nature of the people of Ghana. Clare Brett Smith, April 2012
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Aid to Artisans in Ghana Acknowledging the People Who Made it Work and who made the Work a Pleasure
First and foremost, the late great Esther Afua Ocloo, 1919-2002. a friend and the founder of Aid to Artisans Ghana, as well as a leader of numerous other international and national organizations. She guided ATA from 1988 through 1994 and her successor, the current leader of Aid to Artisan Ghana, Bridget Kyerematen, is made in the same wise, generous and energetic mold. 94
C.K.Darko, standing left, was the local ATAG organizer and a gifted teacher. What he learned with ATA he passed along at artisan meetings throughout Ghana. 95
Above, Ralph Ashong, sculptor and manager of ATAG post-projec t. Above right, ATAG’s headquarters in Accra at the time, and, below, the original board of ATAG. Left to right: Stephen Ocloo: Hannah Agymah; Attorney Akuffo, Esther Ocloo, and B.K. Mensah, Chairman:
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Burge commented on his picture of me that my hair was no match for the hat and braiding on either side.
Burge was Aid to Artisans’
Treasurer, I was the President, and we were lucky to travel together almost all the time. Lower right, Burge presents a lap table to a potter in Kpandu. Most of the potters worked standing (page 46 and 47), but Esther Ocloo wanted to increase their comfort - and save their backs. I’d be curious to know, after all these years, if they continue to use the boards or reverted to their old style.
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Gretchen Wilson of LITTLE SOULS, noted for folksy and individualistic dolls, designed simple cloth dolls using the black socks she found in the Kumasi market. Planned for export , the dolls were not exported because they were snapped up at home. Children loved them! Until then dolls, dressed in Ghanaian hats, baskets and textiles, had not been made for Ghanaian children.
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Holland Millis, with baskets above, was the chief design consultant, and his knowledge of Ghana and his many friendships there were key. At right, Mary Whitesides, from SUNDANCE catalogue, played Simon Says with eager children.
Below left, another key person, Jasperdean Kobes of
BAMBOULA, a steadfast importer of Ghanaian crafts with Millis and Tetteh, a bead artisan. Right, with a leather artisan, Mimi Robinson, designer, and Dee Ann Bauer, ATA’s Marketing Director. There were many others, Karla Hostetler, Tom Vincent, Karen Gibbs, Phyllis Woods, Leslie Mittelberg, Gretchen Wilson - and we all loved Ghana.
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GHANA ★ Travel & Work & Portraits grew out of an Aid to Artisans project over a six year period in the late 80s and early 90s. It’s personal but, in a way, also a report on the experience, and it might, therefore, be of general interest. My other public books, along with this one, are on Facebook, Clare Brett Smith >Photo Books by Clare Brett Smith Vineyard Summers Japan, Attention to Detail China 1977★Character Oaxaca*Mexico 1970-1979 Men&Boys/Women&Children,Pakistan Honduras, an ATA Project Beauty&The Factory/The Stanley Works Senso di Posto. Italy in the 1980s Egypt, a Portfolio Memoir of Hungar
© 2012 Clare Brett Smith