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Abstract

This article examines the Indigenous pottery tradition of Kalpourgan, a remote village in Iranian Baluchistan, where women have sustained a thousand-year-old ceramic crafting practice that does not require a wheel. Drawing on visual ethnography, field interviews, and postcolonial feminist theory, the study explores how Kalpourgan pottery functions not only as material culture but also as a gendered form of labor embedded within household economies. Through direct observation, semi-structured interviews with women potters, and visual documentation—including photography, drawing, and video—the research traces how design is embedded in oral transmission, ritual practice, and intergenerational knowledge systems. The findings demonstrate that pottery production, conducted within the domestic sphere, contributes to defraying the cost of household expenditures, children’s education, and marriage-related costs, while remaining shaped by patriarchal social norms. Although decision-making authority largely remains the domain of men, women’s artisanal income generates subtle forms of negotiated agency within family structures. Situating Kalpourgan pottery within feminist and postcolonial frameworks—particularly intersectionality and transnational feminism—the article argues that craft operates simultaneously as cultural preservation, economic strategy, and a constrained yet meaningful form of resistance. By foregrounding the intersection of gendered labor, family well-being, and cultural identity, the study contributes to broader debates on household division of labor and social change in the Global South.

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