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Ladi Kwali or Ladi Dosei Kwali, OON NNOM, MBE ( – 12 August 1984) was a Nigerian pottery, Ceramic art and educator.
Ladi Kwali was born in the village of Kwali in the Gbari region of Northern Nigeria, where pottery was an indigenous occupation among women. She learned pottery as a child through her aunt, using the traditional method of coiling. She made large pots for use as water jars, cooking pots, bowls, and flasks from coils of clay, beaten from the inside with a flat wooden paddle. They were decorated with incised geometric and stylized figurative patterns, including scorpions, lizards, crocodiles, chameleons, snakes, birds, and fish.
Her pots were noted for their beauty of form and decoration, and she was recognized regionally as a gifted and eminent potter. Several were acquired by the emir of Abuja, Alhaji Sulaimanu Barau, in whose home they were seen by Michael Cardew in 1950.
During her first professional years, the traditional cultural environment moved her to produce pottery pieces that were influenced by the Gbagyi tradition and accentuated with personal idioms. Her approach to clay was echoed by mathematical undertones, made visible by the continuous display of symmetry.
By the time Cardew left his post in 1965, the Centre had attracted four additional women from Gwari: Halima Audu, Lami Toto, Assibi Iddo, and Kande Ushafa. These women worked together in one of the workshops, which they called Dakin Gwari (the Gwari room), to hand-build large water pots.
She would impress patterns on top of the figures by rolling small roulettes of twisted string or notched wood over the surface of the clay, sometimes as horizontal banding and sometimes in vertical panels. The wooden roulettes consisted of small cylinders of hard wood, two or three inches long and a half-inch in diameter, notched with straight, oblique, or parallel patterns. The earthenware vessels and decorative techniques have been dated back to the Neolithic period. Following the region's traditional method, they were fired in a bonfire of dry vegetation.
Kwali was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in 1963.
In 1977, she was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria.
In 1980, the Nigeria (from the Cabinet Office of the Federal Republic of Nigeria) invested on her with the insignia of the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award (NNOM), "Nigerian National Order Of Merit Award", Frontiers News, 5 December 2013. the highest national honor for academic achievement.
She also received the national honour of the Officer of the Order of the Niger (OON) in 1981.
Her picture appears on the back of the Nigerian 20 Naira banknote.
A major street in Abuja is called Ladi Kwali Road.
The Sheraton Hotel houses the Ladi Kwali Convention Center, which is one of the largest conference facilities in Abuja, consisting of ten meeting rooms and four ballrooms.
Her works are held in collections all around the world, such as Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, USA, Victoria and Albert Museum, and Aberystwyth University Ceramics Gallery, UK
In 2022, a significant exhibition titled Body Vessel Clay, Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art, curated and conceived by Dr Jareh Das, was held at Two Temple Place and the York Art Gallery. This exhibition highlighted Ladi Kwali and her influence on a generation of Black female artists, using Kwali as a starting point to explore 70 years of ceramics by Black women artists.
The Google Doodle for 16 March 2022 was in honor of Kwali.
Ladi Kwali was profiled as part of an exhibition review in The New York Times, coinciding with the US debut of Body Vessel Clay, Black Women, Ceramics & Contemporary Art, at Ford Foundation Gallery in 2025.
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