Artists

Nesta Nala lived and worked in the arid and economically depressed Oyaya area in Thukela Valley near Middledrift. She began making traditional Zulu vessels at the age of twelve, under the guidance of her mother Siphiwe, who in turn had been taught by her mother. Until the late 1970s, Nesta Nala was making beer vessels for local consumption. The vessels were hand coiled from locally sourced clay, burnished and then fired with dried aloe leaves.

In 1976, Nala fist produced pots for the tourist market through the Vukani Association in Eshowe. Nala’s skill as an expert local potter was evident and her production soon became exclusively for an external market. In 1983 Nala was commissioned to replicate some iron-age sherds found in the area by archaeologist Leonard Van Schalkwyk. This was to have a profound effect on the designs she applied to her vessels. Nala’s ukhamba and uphiso shaped vessels produced since the mid-1980s were made largely for commissioned patronage, with refined raised, incised, impressed and imprinted textures becoming her trademark. Since the 1990s, recognition for Nala as one of KwaZulu-Natal’s most distinguished potters has continued to grow both nationally and internationally.

Nesta Nala won the FNB Vita Craft Competition in 1995 and National Ceramics Biennale in 1996, and she represented South Africa at the Cairo International Biennale for Ceramics in 1994 and at the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in the United States of America in 1999. Nala’s work is represented in major public and private collections throughout South Africa and internationally.