Changing Times at the Bahla Potteries
My husband and I visited Oman for a second time and were looking forward to seeing more of the country. Our hosts promised that they would arrange a visit to the local potters during our stay. On our previous visit nobody knew where to find them, but somebody had taken the trouble to find the information in the interim.
The trip was arranged and armed with a newly published guide book we set out, accompanied by a Jordanian nurse who was a charming guide and interpreter. We drove inland for three hours through bright, colourful desert mountain scenery dotted with oases of date palms. The old village houses were built of mud and the land irrigated by the ancient falaj system in which water is brought from the mountains by a series of channels. However, times are changing in Oman. For twenty years oil money has been used wisely and the country has been transformed. We drove on modern roads and everywhere new houses and shops were being built. Modern irrigation has made the desert bloom with trees and shrubs. Large plastic models of animals, pottery jars, palm trees, coffee pots and other cultural features decorated the roadside resembling a giant theme park.
We passed through the old capital of Nizwa where the fort had been restored and a few miles further on turned into the narrow streets of Bahla where the guide book said that pots are made on a slow kick wheel, unchanged since Sumarian times. I was very excited when we spotted several large kilns built of mud bricks with piles of fired pots inside and around them. The pots ranged from small water carriers to huge date storage jars for which Bahla is famous. Nearby were piles of dry clay and pits holding wet clay, but curiously this seemed to be the only pottery. I spotted a cement mixer and then a small shed with a large engine. On peering through the workshop doors I saw a pugmill, electric wheels and horror of horrors a large metallic blue electric kiln. What was going on here? Had I come too late? This was not what the glossy new guide book had said. The industrial revolution had come to Bahla which was good for the potters, but a disappointment to me. However all was not lost as the pots were being made in the same style, they were still using the mud brick kilns for firing all the water pots and the old kick wheels and woven mats for kneading were still intact. Our guide explained my interest to the potter who kindly took us through all the processes, explaining both the old and new ways.
Two types of local white earthenware clay were used with various amounts of sand according to the size of pots to be made. Previously, they broke up the clay manually and put it into a pit with water. It was trodden by foot until mixed and the resulting slurry piped to a lower settling pit and left for about three days until plastic. Now the clay is broken up in a cement mixer and taken to the little shed where it was put in a deep pit with water and mixed with paddles on a drive shaft into a slurry which then ran into the settling tanks. When ready the clay was cut into blocks and taken into the workshop. On the floor was a large circular woven mat about five feet in diameter raised higher in the centre. Here the clay used to be laid out and kneaded round and round by foot, but now a pugmill is used and the mat only used for final kneading and forming the clay into balls. I watched water jugs being made at great speed on two electric wheels while the old kick wheels stood gathering dust at the side of the room. One man was making double walled water jugs to keep the water cool. Unfortuately they were not making the large date jars that week.
I was shown the new electric kiln which was being used for experimental glazed ware. They were using some poisonous looking glazes from Spain that were expensive, not very good and probably full of lead. Outside were the dome shaped kilns made of mud bricks and about eight foot high. In the floor were holes to allow the heat to rise from the fire box beneath which was stoked from a sloping hole at the side of the kiln. There was a chimney in the roof and the arched front entrance was bricked up during firing. The fuel used was brushwood from dead palm trees and the pots were fired to a low temperature so that they were still porous.
It was a privilege to see yet another method of making and firing pots before these ancient skills disappear.