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"I made this jar...."
-Dave
"Along the banks of the Savannah River, Native Americans some 4500 years ago discovered that fire could harden clay to a stone-like consistency. These unknown people mixed Spanish moss or palmetto fibers with the clay to make the earliest known pottery vessels in North America.
The Edgefield area is endowed with rich clay resources including massive deposits of kaolin, sands, feldspars, and pine trees, all necessary for making pottery.
The Old Edgefield District birthed a stoneware tradition based on Chinese technology using English traditional methods making vessels
with African slave labor. This area has been dubbed the crossroads of clay because of this international mix.
Beginning shortly after 1800, the Landrum family started true pottery manufactories to supply the S.C. backcountry with necessary
everyday utensils. Basically, kitchen and smokehouse utensils were made, but rarely were items made for the table.
This tradition grew to a height circa 1850 when, according to the U.S. census, five potteries employing 35 people produced over 100,000
gallons of pottery. Three out of the five factories were related to the Landrum family. Numerous factories operating over a period of time
at a dozen sites produced a variety of wares, including molding wares.
The heart of the Edgefield stoneware tradition involved manufacture of ware using what is termed today "alkaline" glaze, believed to have
been derived from information passed to the west by French Jesuit priests living in the orient in the early 18th century describing. Chinese
methods for making porcelain. Edgefield potters took similar materials, basically feldspar, wood ashes, lime, and sand-grinding and
blending it to make a crude celadon glaze. Most typically formed were storage jars from one-half to 30 gallons commonly used for
pickling, sating meat, storing lard, etc. Also, jugs for holding vinegars, wines, and spirituous liquors, pitchers, pans, and bowls for the
kitchen; plus pipes and marbles for the simple pleasure of life.
As competition increased, potters, around the early 1840's-began to slip decorate their wares using iron slips and kaolin-based white slips
resulting in objects that are today avidly sought and esteemed by scholars and collectors as some of the best folk art in the south. The
Edgefield tradition produced many jars and vessels in the swag and tassel design neoclassical inspired and adapted from moldings in Charleston town houses. More rarely, they depicted men on horseback, southern belles in hoop skirts, African-Americans toasting each other, chickens, snakes, crows, and pigs-everyday life around them. Beautifully illustrated in slip are the Rhodes Factory pieces with thistles and tulip designs.
Some of the most interesting and sought-after vessels are those by Dave Pottery-a literate slave trained to set type for Dr. Abner Landrum's Pottersville newspaper. Dave commonly signed and dated his ware, and less often wrote simple verseson his sometimes massive 20 and 30 gallon jars and jugs. Some speak of food, religion, shoes, lions, volcanoes, and money.
Also of African origin are pots termed "face vessels"--usually jugs, but sometimes cups, crocks, or pitchers with a face modeled into the object using white kaolin clay for eyes and teeth. These small objects are powerful expressions reminiscent of African sculpture.
The tradition declined about the time of the Civil War, but still continued to produced similar wares for the agrarian economy, with the tradition finally winding down in the 1930's with the production of flower pots. Edgefield proved a training ground for potters who moved with the westward expansion of America to Georgia, western North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas. Potters that had actually worked in Edgefield wound up in Texas using traditional Edgefield technologies and making similar objects.
Time brought many changes. The death knell of many potters across the country came with the invention of the Mason screwtop jar in 1858. Combined with the move from the farm to the city, the breakup of the plantations, and the slave economy after the Civil War the tradition died in South Carolina."