On the main street through the village of Istalif, the scrape of the bricklayer's trowel rings off the walls opposite. In contrast, the potter's kick-wheel in the workshop above the street is almost silent. Kick, spin, kick, spin: when Qari Aktar Mohammad hits his stride, he can turn out almost a pot a minute. He began learning the craft from his father when he was just 13.

Istalif's tradition of making ceramics goes back at least 400 years. But in 1996, the village was razed by the Taliban after the withdrawal of the Northern Alliance fighters. They destroyed most of the houses, burnt the rest, and gave the inhabitants an hour to leave.

Some of the potters buried the tools under the floors of their houses. The tools were still there when they returned to Istalif after 2001, and the fall of the Taliban.

“The Taliban didn’t want to let us work. They burned all our houses,” said Qari Aktar. He and his family fled to Kabul, where they continued to make pots. But they had nowhere permanent to live, so in 2002, they returned home. “Istalif is my country,” he says. Now, there are around 60 potters’ workshops operating in Istalif. But an old craft faces new hurdles.

Traditionally, kilns are fired with wood. But Afghanistan's forests are disappearing, hastened by illegal logging controlled by the warlords. Even when wood is available, the price is high.

The organisation

Now, an organisation dedicated to preserving Afghanistan's cultural heritage is trying new methods. The Turquoise Mountain Foundation (TMF), based in Kabul, has built a gas kiln in Istalif. It’s part of a resource centre which is subsidised to allow potters to experiment. The gas kiln fires at higher temperatures, which makes the pots stronger, and so more suitable for export. It’s also easier to control the temperature and is cheaper to operate.

But that in its turn brings problems. The glazes crack and graze at the higher temperature. So potters at the resource centre are working to reformulate the glazes, and to get rid of the lead traditionally used. TMF’s Noah Coburn says the potters need help if they are to improve the quality of their products and reach a wider market.
Because of the high price of wood, Istalifi potters typically pack 800 to 1,200 pots into a kiln at a time. They stack them, using small triangular trivets which leave three small, unglazed scars where the trivets separate the pots.

But the scars are frowned on by international buyers. “The potters know how to take away the three scars if they wanted to. The problem is that you have to put shelves in the kiln,” Coburn explains. “So there are fewer pots per kiln. You get a slightly nicer pot, but one that costs four, five or six times as much. It makes it unaffordable,” he says, especially to the Afghans who make up 90 percent of the market. TMF is also working to improve the quality of the clay used.

Daud, 35, is one of the Istalifi potters interested in trying new methods. Like Qari Akbar, he comes from a family of potters which fled to Kabul during the Taliban time. “In Kabul, we burned wood to fire our kiln. It smoked a lot, which was not good for the neighbourhood. The governor didn’t like us, and we couldn't continue,” he says. He says he’s happy with his work, and is interested in seeing how the gas kiln works.

Train women

The TMF is now looking at expanding its work in Istalif, creating a programme to train women in putting the designs on the pots, and possibly reviving the local tile-making industry, which had died out. The idea would be to make tiles to sell to wealthy Middle Easterners who are commissioning mosques. But Istalif is a conservative village, and Noah Coburn acknowledges they will have to move slowly in creating opportunities for women.

Istalif's pots are not fine art. Many of them break easily. Some of the designs are crudely drawn. But the ceramics made here are a part of a genuine folk tradition, one that's popular with Afghans and foreigners alike.
The hope is that by making a few small changes, a craft which was nearly destroyed by Afghanistan's wars can regenerate and prosper, eventually reaching a wider audience.

NYT