Mark of the Potter on the Soque River

There are two stories in the building at Mark of the Potter: the mill and the gallery. The mill is Depression-era farm-country history. The gallery is a 1969 retirement project that has lasted more than five decades. For hours, trout feeding and directions, see our visitor guide.

All dates are from the gallery's own mill history and about pages. They don't give the flood year, so we don't either.

The Soque River drops over shoals at this spot, and people used that water power long before the pottery. Mark of the Potter says original mills along the river were built as early as the 1820s. In 1928 Robert Watts and his father, Allen "Grandpa" Watts, bought the Hill's Mill property. Grandpa Watts's knowledge of building and milling proved invaluable, the gallery says, when the family built the Watts mill at the spot you can visit today.

It was the Depression, and times were lean for everyone. The gallery notes that about the only businesses around were moonshining and a little sawmilling, and that although wood sold slowly, the grist mills kept grinding steadily.

The gallery tells its own beginning this way: a couple in Georgia decided to start a pottery store as a retirement project. They found the Grandpa Watts mill closed because of flood damage, or "high waters," bought the property, repaired the buildings, set up their studio and remodeled the upstairs into an apartment. They opened Mark of the Potter in 1969. That makes the shop more than half a century old, and the gallery calls itself the oldest-running pottery gallery in Georgia, which is the gallery's own claim.

The gallery opened in 1969, the same year many Helen storefronts got their Alpine fronts about 25 minutes away. The two stories have little else in common. Our 1969 page tells Helen's version.

According to its website, local artists produce and sell American-made functional pottery at the gallery, and it describes the place as the intersection of art and nature. Rainbow, brook and brown trout gather in the river below the shop balcony, and visitors feed them. The upstairs apartment in the 1930s mill is now a vacation rental on Airbnb, and private pottery classes are available on request. It also sells online.

To put the shop in context, read about the region's pottery families on our folk pottery page, or visit the Folk Pottery Museum, which is free. Both are about Georgia clay; they're different traditions. The museum's focus is the Meaders and other "clay clans" of the 19th and early 20th centuries, while Mark of the Potter sells work by living artists.