THE POTTERY VILLAGE OF TANOU SAKASSOU

It takes a small ten minutes to join the peaceful village of Tanou Sakassou, located ten kilometers from Bouaké. With just under 2,000 souls, more than 300 of whom live indirectly from pottery, this small town is known for its mastery of ceramic art and its black land potteries embedded with silica glitters. The forms of achievements (kédjenou pots, canaries, chief vases, jars, varied dishes, and more contemporary objects decorated with geometric motifs inspired by archaic beliefs and rites), zoomorphic or anthropomorphic, are distinguished by their fineness and originality: a woman's neck, vase to the shape of a curved character, gargoulettes with two bottlenecks, lid decorated with birds assembled in a circle of family solidarity that is realized by the common consumption of the customary drink… Once clay is taken in the surrounding quarries and the pot shaped, the ornamental motifs are made in relief or gravened in the form of fingerprints carried out directly on the raw ground by means of corn or braided strings. The work is then baked in the oven, then smoke to the rice sound and soaked in a decoding of sea wood or coated with a mixture of soil soil and decoding of anacardier bark, which gives it a beautiful red-brown shining. Here, the majority of women - together in a cooperative since 1986 - work pottery, but if you go on the spot, do not hesitate to ask Julien Yao Koffi, a craftsman-potter passionate about his profession and fervent defender of the magnificent Chummy heritage. It will explain to you everything you need to know about this ancestral know-how, which is so important to women's empowerment and the development of internal tourism. He may also tell you that he worked with American museums interested in the pottery of Tanou Sakassou, and even took part in the Paris Fair. Finally, he will tell you that the Village Artisanal Center, created in 1972, was ravaged by a fire in early 2016, and that thanks to the involvement of the Tourist Development Fund of Côte d 'Ivoire, it could be rebuilt in a more modern and better equipped version, with a workshop and an exhibition hall enabling the pods to streets and potters of the village produce and sell on average 200 works a week.