Raised in Clay
The Southern Pottery Tradition
by Nancy Sweezy
New afterword by the author
Raised in Clay
is a remarkable portrait of pottery making in the South, one of the
oldest and richest craft traditions in America. Focusing on more than
thirty potters in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Mississippi,
and Kentucky, Nancy Sweezy tells how families preserve and practice the
traditional art of pottery making today. First published in 1984,
Sweezy's book documents the last generation of potters to have direct
contact with preindustrial pottery traditions. It portrays the
personalities of the potters, treating this aspect as carefully as the
traditions themselves, and discusses various types of wheels, glazes,
and kilns and each potter's specialty pieces. Photographs and line
drawings showing potters, their potteries and equipment, examples of
finished work, and step-by-step works in progress enhance the text.
Sweezy's introductory chapter provides a superb history of southern
pottery making. For this edition, she has added a new afterword on
recent changes in the potting scene.
About the author
Nancy
Sweezy, a potter for more than thirty-five years, is former director of
Jugtown Pottery in Seagrove, North Carolina. She lives in Arlington,
Massachusetts, where she is executive director of Country Roads, Inc.,
and is developing the Armenia Cultural Project.
284 pp., 81/2 x 11, 8 color and 308 b&w photos
ISBN 0-8078-4481-0
Published
Fall/Winter 1994