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Uphiso

A clay vessel with a rounded bottom and wide shoulders, tapering to a neck that flares upward to a lipless mouth. The exterior of vessel is mostly tan or light orange with some blackened areas and a cattle motif is in low relief on the body of the vessel.

A clay vessel with a rounded bottom and wide shoulders, tapering to a neck that flares upward to a lipless mouth. The exterior of vessel is mostly tan or light orange with some blackened areas and a cattle motif is in low relief on the body of the vessel.

Artist Clive Sithole (South African, b. 1971)
Title Uphiso
Date 2007
Medium Clay
Dimensions Object: 18 × 15 5/16 in. (45.7 × 38.9 cm)
Overall: 18 x 15 5/16 in. (45.7 x 38.9 cm)
Credit Line Museum purchase with funds from the Class of 1949 Endowed Curatorship for the Arts of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number 2007.15

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About this Work

Born in Soweto, Clive Sithole is an urban ceramist who bases much of his work on traditional Zulu pottery forms. For example, he calls this vessel uphiso, the Zulu name for a pot with a neck that is used for transporting and storing liquids. Sithole’s uphiso, however, has a taller and more curved neck than a traditional uphiso. The vessel’s decoration, three cattle, recalls an important aspect of traditional Zulu culture, though such imagery is not a customary part of Zulu pottery. The mottled black and orange surface is a result of a reduction firing, in which lack of oxygen causes molecular changes in some of the clay, producing the darkened areas.


Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Uphiso | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2024. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=2007.15