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SCARY STUFF

By CINDA CHAVICH

Special to The Globe and Mail

(Seagrove, North Carolina) - “These really are ugly,” I say out loud, wandering among shelves filled with stout little crockery jugs sprouting hideous facial features, each one more grotesque than the next.

The local woman next to me stiffens at my comment, but there’s no question that the creators of this unusual art are into ugly one up-man-ship. That’s the point of my pilgrimage to Seagrove, North Carolina, the back woods home of generations of humble craftsman who have long used the local clay to fashion rustic, utilitarian stoneware, from whisky jugs like these to butter churns, bowls and other assorted household crockery.

I’m searching for the holy grail of the ugly jug, this area’s longtime specialty and now a country collectible – early examples of this unique Americana fetching thousands of dollars.

“The likeness was done to scare kids away from poisons and old timey white lightening,” says potter Annie King whose husband Terry has become famous for his contemporary face jugs. “Now it’s a form of southern folk art.”

This Seagrove gallery is brimming with examples. There are small jugs you can hold in the palm of your hand and tall cylindrical jugs, jugs appropriate for toting along, and massive jugs to stand in the storeroom. These hand-made, everyday vessels have little in common, except their unique, three-dimensional decoration – hooked noses, bulging eyes and gaping mouths filled with jagged teeth that give these face jugs their frightening presence and strange, collectible appeal.

I’d seen an early example of this southern American art form pop up on an episode of the Antique Road Show. It was large – probably 18 or 24 inches tall – and the typical dark brown “tobacco spit” glaze still used in these parts. It was ugly, too, with that kind of truly tacky 1960s rumpus room look that you’re likely to uncover at suburban garage sales and flea markets.

And it had been picked up for a song at just that kind of sale. Imagine the owner’s surprise when the television antique expert dubbed his find valuable “American folk art”, dated it to the mid-1800s and slapped a price of $50,000 (US) on it.

I was suitably intrigued to head down the road from Raleigh to explore the source of this off-beat tradition. The face jug is a rare curiosity. Still, there’s no question, a two-foot ugly jug is not the kind of thing you’d really want hanging around your house.

“They’re hideous,” I remark again, then backtrack quickly when I catch my southern guide’s steely eye.

“In a cool sort of way, I mean.”

The provenance of these pieces is definitely cool. And it really is cool to find a modern generation of potters making cups and bowls and jugs the same way their distant forefathers did, and firing them with old-fashioned salt glazes in big wood-fired ground hog kilns. Like the basic brown jugs you find in the local antique stores, some dating back 200 years, these families of potters have been “turning” out here in the back woods of North Carolina for generations.

They came because of the local clay and stayed until ‘modern’ materials like glass and plastic ended a century of demand for their functional pottery containers and household goods. A few persevered, though, creating art pottery after WWI, and ensuring that, even today, the Seagrove name is synonymous with stoneware. The area remains one of the largest and oldest communities of working potters in the U.S.

Not only are the local face jugs collectible, collectors from across the country come to Seagrove for the spring “kiln openings,” when potters reveal their latest creations. And they gather at big antique sales, like the massive outdoor Liberty Antiques Festival, to pick up pieces of old Jugtown Pottery signed by early artisans like Edward Webster, Gurdon Robins, or later masters like Dorothy Auman and Ben Owen. Face jugs made by one of the first black potters, known only as “Dave the Slave” fetch the highest prices, but some of the most dramatic are the fire engine red “devil” jugs, complete with horns, made by Burlon Craig, a beloved septugenarian potter who died in 2002.

You can see it all in Seagrove, a pilgrimage place for professional potters and amateurs like me. The potters’ enclave is a scattered rural commune, just 30 km (20 miles) south of Asheboro, or about 90 minutes from Raleigh by car. At the crossroads (and the town’s only traffic light), you’ll find several shops where a selection of work by local potters is shown. But the most fun about visiting Seagrove is seeing potters “turning” in their own home studios, garages, shacks and shelters dotted throughout the rolling countryside, or signing up for a hands-on holiday to learn to “turn and burn” your own rustic stoneware. At every corner you’ll come upon a cluster of hand-made signs, pointing the way to more country artisans, studios with names like Pot Luck and Jug-or-Not.

There are more than 95 potteries in and around Seagrove, and some estimate up to 500 potters working in this small rural area. Some learned their craft at the knee of parents and grandparents, others have been formally trained at art schools. Most are in their studios throwing and glazing daily, and will stop to explain their work to anyone who shows up. Some, like Kit Vanderwal, even offer learning vacations and for $50 a day, will take in budding artists for informal one-on-one instruction.

I was at the wheel at his home studio, getting a lesson in throwing a cylinder, while he told me about his own obsession with face jugs.

“The tradition goes back to Louisianna, to the 1700s – they were grave markers designed to keep bad spirits away,” says Vanderwal of the hideous faces that were also common in Georgia. “Here, they were made for wine, spirits and poisons. The uglier the jug the better because you didn’t want your kids gettin’ into your liquor.”

“See how he comes to life?” he adds, fastening a pair of oversized lips onto his latest creation.

Vanderwal is a newcomer to Seagrove, pursuing a second career in clay. But many of the potters here are from the original potting families, fiercely proud of the “authentic” skills they are preserving, skills learned at the knee of the region’s original master potters. When I met Terry King and he showed me the authentic wood-fired, tunnel-shaped kiln he uses to salt glaze the jugs he makes in the tradition of his mentors, big name Seagrove potters like Joe Owen and Dot Auman, something strange happened. I began to truly appreciate his humorously-hideous brown faces, with their rows of jagged teeth made from broken china plates and jug-head ears. And despite his wife’s warning – “They’re like jelly beans, if you buy one, you’ll buy more” – I couldn’t leave without one of his smallest specimens tucked into my bag.

My ugly jug now has a prominent place in the kitchen at the cabin. Yes, it’s homely, but in a good way.

IF YOU GO:

Seagrove is a small village in Randolph County, just outside of Asheboro, where nearly 100 pottery studios are scattered throughout the countryside. When you arrive in Seagrove, visit the North Carolina Pottery Center (336-873-8430, www.ncpotterycenter.com) where you can learn the history of Seagrove potteries and organize tours and lessons with local potters. You’ll also fine information about Seagrove potters through the visitor’s bureau, www.visitrandolph.org. Don’t miss visits to King’s Pottery for face jugs (336-873-8733, www.kingspottery.com), Pott’s Pottery for ninth generation potter Linda Potts’ functional stoneware (336-873-9660, www.pottspottery.com), and Phil Morgan Pottery (336-873-7304, www.seagroverpotteries.com) for his dazzling crystalline-glazed porcelain vases.

The Liberty Antiques Festival (April and September in Liberty, NC) attracts stars like Julia Roberts and Joan London, who come for the authentic country collectibles and the rustic folk art pottery that’s famous in this part of North Carolina (336-622-3040) or visit Collector’s Antique Mall in Asheboro (336-629-8105). In Seagrove, galleries have examples of pottery from several local artists, although some sell exclusively through their own on-site shops. For a speedy shopping tour, local resident Roger Brittingham offers guided trips through his Out & About Tours (336-879-5777 or www.clayseeker.com)

The big annual pottery sale here happens in November, just after the American Thanksgiving holiday, at the Seagrove School or you can wait until the spring Kiln Openings, when potters fill their yards with the first pieces fired in the wood kilns, after a winter of throwing.

(this story first appeared in the Globe and Mail newspaper)