Keicondo

Opening on to a wooded field, the sound of bush warblers enters the studio of Keicondo.  Inside it are letter shapes, photographs, pottery offcuts and other fragments of inspiration.  The potter himself is affable in every respect as he discusses his journey to this spot.   A year spent in Bolivia, a brief period working in a firm marketing concrete… before a realisation that the opportunity presented by Kasama’s pottery scene was too good to turn away from.  “There is something here that you can not find in other places” he says.  This does not mean that all was easy, and time was not needed to develop his distinctive style of fire singed yellows and blacks.  Especially suited as a canvas for food presentation, Keicondo has built a particular niche supplying ingredient focussed bistros.  The kind that serve natural wine.  His travel in ceramics in some ways mirrors that of his father, an Ethiopian ceramicist who made his home in Kasama.   This, he says typifies what the town is about: “for someone to come from outside, and in Kasama to present work as Kasama-ware, seems like it might be an easy thing, but I wonder if 30 years ago there were many places like that.  I haven’t heard of it”.  Kasama is Keicondo’s home.

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