Ensumbi (bottle)

Drawing inspiration from the shapes of hollowed gourd containers, refined ensumbi bottles feature smooth, burnished surfaces with precise, incised patterning. Such delicate vessels have held deep social and symbolic significance in Ganda communities and are tied to the founding of the Kingdom of Buganda in the mid-second millennium CE. According to oral tradition, the first potter began his career as the ssekayala (chief decorator) to the kingdom’s first ruler, Kabaka Kintu. The ssekayala was a valued member of the staff who Kabaka Kintu later appointed to the role of sseddagala (chief medicine man). In that position, he combined ideas of aesthetics and well-being through the creation of vessels from which the royal family ate and drank. Subsequent potters continued this tradition, producing pottery for both local and foreign consumption, until the abolishment of the Buganda Kingdom by Uganda’s second prime minister, Apollo Milton Obote, in 1967.