North Georgia's Folk Pottery Tradition

Northeast Georgia made some of the South's most recognizable pottery, and the families who made it are still part of the landscape here. The best-known pieces are face jugs, stoneware vessels with grinning, scowling or startled faces modeled onto the front, but the tradition started with plainer work: jugs for whiskey and cane syrup, churns, and jars for preserving food.

Sources: the museum's visitor page and Mark of the Potter's about page. Call before you go on holidays or in bad weather.

John Burrison, the museum's curator, wrote the New Georgia Encyclopedia entry on folk pottery. He counts about 450 known Georgia folk potters, who saw themselves as humble artisans, like a blacksmith or basket maker. They made sturdy stoneware for farm use: jugs to store whiskey and cane syrup, churns for butter and buttermilk, and jars for preserving vegetables, fruit and meat. Families passed shapes and methods down through generations, and each pottery center developed its own look under what he calls dominant "clay clans."

Mossy Creek, in the foothills of southern White County, was the oldest northeast Georgia pottery center. It began in the 1820s when potters from the Davidson, Craven and Dorsey families moved from North Carolina. It became Georgia's largest center, with about ninety potters, and home to the famous Meaders Pottery, launched in 1893. Other north Georgia centers included Gillsville in Hall County, where the Hewell, Craven and Ferguson families are still active.

The craft nearly died in the early 1900s. State prohibition in 1907 shut down licensed distillers and cut demand for whiskey jugs, glass and metal containers replaced stoneware for most uses, and the Great Depression finished off many traditional potters. The survivors found new customers in tourists and crafts enthusiasts.

Cheever Meaders inherited the family pottery at Mossy Creek in 1920. In the late 1950s his wife, Arie, taught herself to throw and made colorful birds and animals for the visitor trade. Their son Lanier Meaders (1917 to 1998) took over the shop in 1967 and revived the tradition of jugs with applied faces, according to the encyclopedia. His success encouraged others in the region, including his own family members, to keep working.

The family got national attention. The Folk Pottery Museum says the Meaders family appeared in Allen Eaton's 1937 book Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands, and that a Library of Congress event honored them in 1978, when the Smithsonian's documentary film on Meaders Pottery was released. In 2000, northeast Georgia received a Library of Congress "Local Legacies" designation for its pottery heritage.

What the glaze is. Most traditional Georgia stoneware is alkaline-glazed. According to the encyclopedia, the glaze mixes wood ashes or lime with clay and sand, and it turns green or brown depending on the iron it contains and how the kiln fires. It's the glassy olive and rust-brown finish you see on old jugs. In the 1980s the Hewells of Gillsville built a wood-burning "tunnel" kiln and revived alkaline-glazed ware there.

The museum's self-guided tour runs through the "Pottery Maze," a permanent exhibit of more than 200 pieces from northeast Georgia, with a rotating featured exhibit, an interactive area showing how pottery was made and used, and a 10-minute documentary with Meaders family members. A gift shop sells pottery-themed gifts and books. Dr. John Burrison is the museum's curator, and the building was funded by Dean and Kay Swanson. Admission is free every day. More in our arts and galleries guide.

According to its own history, a couple started Mark of the Potter as a retirement project: they found the old Grandpa Watts grist mill closed because of flood damage, bought the property, repaired it and opened the shop in 1969. The business calls itself the oldest-running pottery gallery in Georgia. The mill, built in the 1930s, overlooks the Soque River, and rainbow, brook and brown trout gather below the shop balcony to be fed. Local artists make and sell functional pottery there, and the shop also runs an online store. The address is 9982 Highway 197 North in Clarkesville, and the phone is 706-947-3440. See also our Mark of the Potter page.

The John Burrison Pottery Studio at the Sautee Nacoochee Center is open for classes. It has nine wheels, a hand-building and sculpture area and two kilns, and the museum offers gift certificates for any class. Here are the workshops listed on its calendar this fall; check the museum's classes page for prices and sign-up.

The Helen Arts and Heritage Center in downtown Helen may also offer classes; call 706-878-3933 to ask. And for contemporary handmade mugs and bowls online, Hickory Flat Pottery is a northeast Georgia maker.