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CHAPTER ONE
Carolina Clay: Early Influences on the Stoneware Tradition in South Carolina
During the 1840s and 1850s potters in the Edgefield District of South Carolina developed a distinctive type of stoneware characterized by highly refined alkaline glazes, symmetrical and often sensual forms, and trailed- and brushed-slip decoration, which they sold to merchants, planters, and farmers throughout the state and in northern and eastern Georgia. At the height of Edgefield pottery production in 1850 a total of five large-scale stoneware factories were operating in the district, employing thirty male and five female laborers. Well over a hundred potters were involved in stoneware production in the Edgefield area during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The distinctive stoneware tradition that emerged in South Carolinaās Edgefield District in the first quarter of the nineteenth century influenced pottery production throughout the lower South.
Southern stoneware was the product of an agricultural society. This utilitarian ware, used mainly for food preservation, preparation, and serving, was produced from local stoneware clays and glazed with a mixture of slaked wood ash or lime, clay, and most often an additional silica source, typically in the form of sand, flint, crushed glass, or iron cinders. By utilizing readily available ingredients, the southern folk potter was able to produce clean, inexpensive, and impermeable containers for local use.
A few standard vessel formsāthe storage jar, smaller preserve jar, jug, churn, clabber bowl, and pitcherāwere produced by folk potters throughout the lower South. This ware was generally bulbous or ovoid-shaped during the first half of the nineteenth century, with sharply defined forms and highly refined glazes. Other features that characterized early southern alkaline-glazed stoneware included the use of horizontally placed slab or ear-lug handles on storage and preserve jars, and tie-down rims with a flared or rounded lip protruding outward to hold in place a cloth cover tied with string. As mass-produced glass and metal containers became more widely available in the late nineteenth century, craftsmanship declined. However, a few folk potters, such as Burlon Craig in the Catawba Valley of North Carolina and the Meaders family of White County, Georgia, are still making southern alkaline-glazed folk pottery today.
The old Edgefield District (present-day Edgefield, Aiken, and Greenwood counties) is recognized as the earliest center for the production of alkaline-glazed stoneware in the southern United States (see Figure 1.1). Potters trained in the Edgefield District during the early decades of the nineteenth century followed the westward migration into the lower South, thereby diffusing the tradition throughout the region. Edgefield-trained potters introduced the alkaline-glazed stoneware tradition into Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, and Texas. A number of alkaline-glazed stoneware pottery centers evolved within the region and are characterized by variations in form, detailing, and glaze formulas.
1.1 Map of South Carolina illustrating the location of the old Edgefield District, early center of alkaline-glazed stoneware production.
The domain of the alkaline-glazed stoneware tradition is the lower South, the area below Virginia and extending as far west as Texas. The old Edgefield District of South Carolina represented a core area or cultural hearth for the diffusion of the southern alkaline-glazed stoneware tradition, a unique regional pottery tradition with roots in Europe and Asia. An analysis of the stoneware tradition in South Carolina and its impact upon the development of folk pottery throughout the lower South yields larger patterns that provide a greater understanding of the nature of nineteenth-century southern society and culture.
South Carolina Clays
The principle ingredient used in the production of all pottery is clay. Clay is āgenerally understood to be a natural, earthy, fine-grained material which exhibits plasticity when wet.ā1 Resulting from the weathering of granite, it is composed of silica, alumina, and other mineral and organic ingredients. Stoneware clays, deposited along river banks and old stream beds, were the principle materials used in pottery manufacture in the South.2 Higher percentages of alumina and silica and fewer impurities characterize stoneware and kaolin clays.
The specific characteristics of clays are determined by their place of origin and the processes by which they are formed. South Carolina may be divided into five landform regions based upon relief, rock types, and geologic history: Blue Ridge, Piedmont, Sandhills, Coastal Plain (which can be divided into Inner and Outer Coastal plains), and Coastal Zone (see Figure 1.2). Of these five regions, the Piedmont and Coastal Plain occupy the largest area and are the principle clay-producing regions. The Piedmont, extending from the Sandhills to the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, constitutes a third of the state, covering approximately 10,500 square miles (27,195 square kilometers). The underlying rock structure of the Piedmont region includes crystalline or granitic rocks. The second major clay region is the Coastal Plain, covering the southern and eastern sections of the state. A sedimentary rock structure characterizes the Coastal Plain since it was covered by the ocean at least one hundred million years ago. Sea level was located adjacent to the southern edge of the Sandhills, which dominate Aiken, Lexington, Richland, Kershaw, and Chesterfield counties. Over the last eighty million years the sea level retreated from this position, exposing the Coastal Plain. The basic structure of sedimentary rocks resulted from the deposition of materials on the ocean floor during the Cretaceous period. The geologic boundary separating the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, known as the Fall Line, constitutes the dividing line between these two rock types.3
1.2 Map illustrating the five landform regions of South Carolina.
Two basic types of clays are found in South Carolinaāresidual clays and transported or sedimentary clays. Residual clays are found in the Piedmont and result from the in situ decomposition of granitic or feldspathic rock. These clays are characterized by impurities such as mica, quartz, or sand that are released when the granitic or feldspathic rock decomposes and converts to clay. Iron oxide resulting from the intense leaching of the clay gives them a reddish hue. These weathered Piedmont clays, or saprolites, are found in the northern portion of the Edgefield District.
Sedimentary clays also originate from the feldspathic rocks of the Piedmont but are formed by the transportation of clay particles by running water into streams and rivers flowing out of the region. Kaolin, white clay that has few of the impurities typical of the clays found in the Piedmont, is among the most famous of the sedimentary clays. Aiken County, South Carolina, is well known for its rich kaolin deposits. These Eoceneera clays, extending from the Bath-Langley area to Horse Creek Valley, lie within the Huber Formation. Commercial kaolin mining operations are still active in the Bath-Langley area between Augusta, Georgia, and Aiken, South Carolina. The appearance of these kaolin-rich clays in South Carolina greatly influenced the development of the stoneware tradition in the state. Kaolin-rich clays were used extensively in the Edgefield area in stoneware bodies and glazes. Edgefield stoneware made from these clays produces a resonant tone when struck similar to that of porcelain and may be classified technically as nontranslucent porcelain. During the period from approximately 1840 through the mid-1850s some Edgefield-are a potters also used a kaolin-based slip, a type of liquefied clay, to decorate their ware. Geologist M. Tuomey recognized the importance of South Carolina kaolin in pottery production. He wrote that ācommon pottery is much improved, both in quality and appearance by the addition of this earth [kaolin], and from its abundance, were a little more taste and skill combined in the manufacture, the pottery of this State would be unrivaled.ā4
High-alumina kaolinitic clay deposits occur in a belt that extends from South Carolina across Georgia, central Alabama, northeastern Mississippi, western Tennessee and Kentucky, southern Arkansas, and the eastern and southern parts of Texas. The path of westward movement of the southern stoneware tradition in the nineteenth century followed this zone, lying along the interior boundary of the Coastal Plain and roughly paralleling the Fall Line.5
The stoneware potter often added nonplastic materials such as sand or flint or a highly feldspathic clay to the stoneware clay for added silica content or to improve drying/shrinkage. Other important properties that the potter sought in stoneware clays included high dry strength and retention of form during firing. The clay had to be able to withstand handling and stacking in the kiln in the dry condition. Dry strength and plasticity are related, so the more plastic clays usually also exhibited high dry strength. The rate of shrinkage during drying and firing was also an important property. Shrinkage had to be kept to a minimum in order to produce standard forms and capacities. Increased shrinkage of ware during drying also increased the dangers of cracking or warping. Stoneware potters called very plastic clays with high drying shrinkage āfatā and sandy clays with a low drying shrinkage ālean.ā This variation is related to grain size, the fine-grained being more plastic. Both fat and lean clays were used in stoneware manufacture.6
Stoneware bodies, which are much easier to shape by hand and less brittle and fragile than porcelain bodies, were preferred for the production of utilitarian ware. The higher firing temperatures required in porcelain production, and the two-step firing process for glazed ware, necessitated a greater degree of control than that required in the production of stoneware. Temperatures from 1,140 to 1,300 degrees Celsius are required for the maturation of the porcelain clay body or biscuit, and temperatures from 1,080 to 1,300 degrees for glazed porcelain. Stoneware is also high-fired, but it is usually fired only once, after glazing, with temperatures of 1,150 degrees Celsius being sufficient for the production of most true stoneware.7
Stoneware is impervious to liquids and resistant to corrosion. These features make it more desirable than earthenware for the storage and preservation of acidic foods and liquids. Its plasticity in shaping and toughness when fired, as well as the economic benefits arising from standardized production methods and cheaper raw materials (especially clay) used in its manufacture, have made stoneware preferable to porcelain for many uses.
āCherokee Clayā: Early South Carolina Potters
A strong pottery tradition existed among the indigenous population of South Carolina long before Europeans appeared on the scene. Pre-Colombian potters handbuilt their ware using coiling and āannular ring buildingā techniques (building from a long coil or series of individual rings of clay) and fired them in open hearths. Decorative techniques included cord and fabric marking, incising, punctating, or stamping with a carved wooden paddle. Native American potters were mainly women. Girls apprenticed themselves to their mothers or grandmothers in order to learn the skills and secrets of pottery production.8
Although the native ceramic tradition has largely disappeared in the region, the Catawba Indians of York County, South Carolina, continue to produce traditional southeastern Indian pottery. The pottery trade has served to hold Indian families together and to reinforce community social bonds. Catawba pottery represents the last vestiges of the aboriginal ceramic traditions of the eastern United States.9
The availability of good stoneware clays was the single most important factor leading to the establishment of the nineteenth-century stoneware tradition in South Carolina. South Carolinaās reputation for fine clays became well known in Europe in the mid to late eighteenth century as British potters imported clay from the Cherokee Indian Territory. During the same period some potters began to view South Carolina as an opportunity to establish a pottery factory that would supply the entire region. These early attempts to establish a pottery factory in South Carolina provide important clues to the origins and development of the nineteenth-century stoneware tradition in the state.
In a journal written in 1767 Thomas Griffiths told of a journey that he made to North Carolina to obtain clay for Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood had heard that the Cherokee Indian Territory in North Carolina had produced a fine white earth used by the Indians for pipe-making. Through much difficulty and expense Griffiths managed to procure five tons of the clay from a site in what is today Macon County, North Carolina. Wedgwood judged the Cherokee clay to be of fairly good quality but found the expense of obtaining it to be prohibitive and noted that he had found the recently discovered Cornish clays to be superior for his manufactures.
1.3 Earthenware bowl with applied decoration, 1986, Georgia Harris, York County, S.C. H 6Ā¾ā³, C 28Ā¾ā³. Collection of McKissick Museum, The University of South Carolina, Columbia.
Other potters apparently had experimented with the Cherokee clay before Wedgwood. William Cookworthy, the first English potter to develop true hard-paste porcelain, wrote a letter in 1745 regarding his experimentation with āan earth, the product of the Cherokee Nation in America, called by the natives Unaker.ā Cookworthy later applied for a patent to produce āa kind of porcelain newly invented, composed of moorstone or growan, and growan clay, the stone giving the ware transparence and the clay imparting whiteness and infusibility.ā10 It appears that hard-paste porcelain, while first produced in Germany thirty-five years earlier, was developed in England by Cookworthy through experiments with Carolina clay.
Cookworthy was one of a number of English earthenware potters in search of the Chinese secrets of porcelain manufacture. The biggest obstacle to the development of true hard-paste porcelain in England was lack of knowledge regarding the ingredients used in its manufacture. Kaolin clays were unfamiliar to European potters. Earlier, they had developed soft paste or āartificialā porcelains made with sand, pipe clay, and glass; and later, ābone china,ā of bone ash, china clay, and feldspar. Cookworthy learned of the Chinese techniques and materials used in porcelain manufacture by reading the letters of Pere dāEntrecolles. DāEntrecolles, a French Jesuit who had been living in Kyang-si Province in southeastern China, wrote an account of the porcelain and stoneware manufactures at Ching-te-chen including descriptions of the mining of the raw materials and of how they were purified and processed, the location of the mines and means of transporting the raw materials, and the processes of throwing, trimming, glazing, decorating, and firing. He wrote that āthe material of porcelain is composed of two kinds of clay, one called petun-tse [feldspar]ā and the other kaolin.11 The letters were published and translated into English before the mid-eighteenth century. Since local kaolin was unknown to English potters at this time, the Cherokee clay was viewed as a valuable commodity.
The location of the clay in Carolina must have been widely known because āTassih, the Clay Pits,ā were mentioned in reference to a skirmish fought between the Cherokees and the local militia during the Cherokee Expedition of 1760 and 1761. Also, when Griffiths requested permission from the Cherokee chiefs to remove clay from the pit, several mistrustful...
