North Carolina Pottery: The Collection of The Mint Museums

North Carolina's eighteenth and nineteenth-century Moravian potters were remarkable artisans whose products included coarse earthenware, slip-trailed decorated ware, Leeds-type fine pottery, press-molded stove tiles, figural bottles, toys, and salt-glazed stoneware. Silesian-born and German-trained potter Gottfried Aust was the first to arrive in Bethabara in 1755. After that, numerous apprentices of his carried on the trade in the state and beyond. Some apprentices rose to the rank of master potter. Aust's most successful protégé, Rudolph Christ, excelled in the creation of Queensware, faience, and tortoiseshell-glazed pottery. Swiss-born Heinrich Schaffner, one of several more Moravian master potters, is famously known for his "Salem smoking pipes." Today, museums and private collectors vigorously compete for scarce examples of North Carolina-made Moravian pottery. Every piece found and preserved is like a new paragraph added to the story of the art and mystery of pottery-making in one of the South's earliest settlements.

This richly illustrated portrait of North Carolina's pottery traditions tells the story of the generations of 'tuners and burners' whose creation are much admired for their strength and beauty. The first comprehensive ceramic history for the state, this book examines the largely vanished world of folk potters and the continuing achievements of their descendants.

Collecting North Carolina Pottery: Earthenware, Stoneware, and Fancyware displays and describes hundreds of examples of North Carolina pottery with 450 photographs that include commonplace wares as well as rare and highly collectible one-of-a-kind pieces. Most were made in the years spanning from about 1750 to 1950. Of special significance are examples of Moravian and Quaker-made earthenware created in eighteenth and early nineteenth century settlements. Twentieth century art pottery - so-called Fancyware - in addition to both salt-glazed and alkaline-glazed utilitarian stoneware, rounds out the book's contents. An opening essay, illustrated by some never-before-published historic photographs of the state's potters and potteries, provides an overview of the region's role in ceramics production. Of inestimable value to collectors, historians, archaeologists, antiques dealers, and gallery and museum curators, Collecting North Carolina Pottery: Earthenware, Stoneware, and Fancyware is the most comprehensive catalog of North Carolina pottery, including up-to-date price estimates, available today. 2011 values.

In Wachovia, the various trash pits or middens associated with early Moravian inhabitants, as well as the potters' waster dumps, both in Bethabara and Salem, have provided us with significant insights into an incredibly complex eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century earthenware production. Although local antiquarians and collectors have been aware for many years that pottery constituted one of the largest early industries carried on by the Moravians in North Carolina, it was for the most part only the well-kept archival records that testified to this fact. Fine examples of slip-decorated pottery, as wekk as some utilitarian forms, existed in local collections and in the Wachovia Museum in Old Salem, but it was not until the excavations at Bethabara were begun that anyone became aware of the real significance of the tradition in which local potters were working. -- pg. 4.

Pottery from the Catawba Valley, mountain pottery of Western North Carolina, the Coles, Nell Cole Graves, the Cravens, Jugtown, M.L. Owen, and even rare and unusual pieces are discussed. Signs, stamps, shapes, and symbols used are given coverage, as well as the implications of condition of the pottery. Family tree charts in this book are reprinted from The Traditional Potters of Seagrove, NC, copyright 1994, Robert C. Lock, Inc.

Raised in Clay: The Southern Pottery Tradition