The ar­rival of in­den­tured labour from In­dia to till the sug­ar plan­ta­tions of Trinidad in 1845, for­ev­er changed the fab­ric of our so­ci­ety. Not on­ly did el­e­ments of lan­guage, culi­nary arts, mu­sic and ar­chi­tec­ture en­ter the British colo­nial fab­ric, but so did hand­i­craft.

The small cot­ton "ja­ha­ji" bun­dles lugged all the way from the East con­tained the nec­es­sary ef­fects to start a new life, but an­oth­er pow­er­ful lega­cy ar­rived in the form of skilled hands and keen eyes for de­sign which saw the an­cient art of pot­tery es­tab­lish­ing it­self firm­ly in Trinidad's mud­dy cane­fields.

For much of the 19th Cen­tu­ry and well in­to the 20th, earth­en­ware ves­sels of many shapes and forms were among the most val­ued items of do­mes­tic chat­tels for the mid­dle and low­er eco­nom­ic stra­ta.

In­den­tured im­mi­grants were ba­si­cal­ly pro­vid­ed with no uten­sils by their plan­ta­tion mas­ters ex­cept a small iron pot. From the very earth they mould­ed jars to con­tain their ed­i­bles-am­char, rice, ghee and milk. Born al­so of the earth were the tiny oil lamps which would come to in­deli­bly de­fine them as a peo­ple in a so­ci­ety to which they were alien.

From this bare ne­ces­si­ty, an in­dus­try evolved. Cre­ole, white and black Trinida­di­ans used clay "gob­lets" in their homes to pro­vide a sup­ply of cool wa­ter and even in the great plan­ta­tion hous­es, there was the vast earth­en ca­nari-a pot used for the prepa­ra­tion of pep­per­pot, which it­self was a holdover from Amerindi­an times. Be­fore the com­ing of the In­di­ans, these clay ves­sels had been large­ly im­port­ed from Bar­ba­dos where a thriv­ing in­dus­try ex­ist­ed.

Af­ter serv­ing their con­tracts on the sug­ar plan­ta­tions, sev­er­al time-ex­pired In­di­ans set­tled in the flat marsh­lands just south of the tiny vil­lage of Ch­agua­nas in the 1880s. The soil pro­vid­ed an abun­dance of good, work­able clay, which had to be la­bo­ri­ous­ly dug by hand, be­ing de­posit­ed un­der a few feet of top­soil. Hauled back to the pot­ter's hut on the backs of men and women, the heavy, wet clay then had to be trod­den with bare feet and then knead­ed by hand to re­move im­pu­ri­ties.

Cleaned, the clay would then be cut in­to small­er chunks and giv­en over to the mas­tery of the pot­ter who squat­ted in front of his ever-spin­ning wheel, hon­ing the shapes which would be­come so use­ful to so many. The time­worn gob­lets and wa­ter jugs were cre­at­ed un­der his hands, and al­so thou­sands of tiny oil lamps known as deyas.

Al­though Di­vali did not rise to na­tion­al promi­nence un­til the 1950s, the deya was an es­sen­tial ac­cou­trement of the Hin­du house­hold, be­ing used for sa­cred as well as more mun­dane pur­pos­es. The stretch of road­way be­tween Ch­agua­nas and Chase Vil­lage be­came fa­mous as the pot­ters' row and even at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of tourist brochures of the pe­ri­od which spoke of "the skill and mar­vel­lous dex­ter­i­ty of the coolie pot­tery-mak­ers."

Some like Rad­i­ca's Pot­tery have been go­ing strong for over a cen­tu­ry, keep­ing alive and un­changed both art and tra­di­tion.