For those of you who regularly read this website - you probably know that I have been scouring the northeast states over the last six months in search of North Carolina pottery from the circa 1920-1970 period. I came up with this idea earlier this year, seeing that there is a lot of North Carolina pottery in this area because it was shipped north and sold through stores in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts. I personally feel it is a significant type of American production since so much of it was inspired after ancient shapes and glazes. Overall through, I have found some really good examples, much of which have also been left identified in recent years or decades.
Nonetheless, here are some recent finds, most notably I think are a related glazed Roman earthenware pitcher and ewer. I found both of these objects over the weekend in a storage area owned by a company that cleans out estates in Massachusetts. The company is based in Norwood, Massachusetts, and while they could not provide me with exactly where these objects came from - they did say that they were found in an estate in the Boston area.
Interestingly, I suspect these pieces may have been found in their original context of ownership, considering they are both decorated with the same type of glaze and impressed on the base with the same circular mark, reading, "A.R. Cole Pottery Sanford N.C." And while I have no proof of it - I suspect these objects may have been originally sold in a store in Cambridge which was owned by Nancy Sweezy (1922-2010), who helped revive a resurgence of southern folk art in the twentieth century.
According to the Library of Congress, "Nancy Sweezy, author, folklorist, raised in Concord, New Hampshire, studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts. During World War II, she worked overseas in the Research and Analysis Branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Her interest in craft began with pottery lessons in New England in the 1950s. She worked in partnership with Ralph Rinzler and helped manage Club 47 (now Club Passim) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she served as president of the board. She and Ralph, along with Norman Kennedy and others, formed Country Roads, Inc. in 1966 to support folk arts educational projects, research, and marketing. The group purchased the Jugtown Pottery in Seagrove, North Carolina, in 1968, and Sweezy moved to North Carolina to direct the operation and work with traditional potters in the area. In the 1980s in Boston, Nancy organized the Refugee Arts Group to encourage recent Southeast Asian and other immigrants to preserve and perpetuate craft, dance, and music traditions from their communities of origin. In the 1990s, Sweezy documented the traditional crafts of Armenia, making more than a dozen trips to the country. In 2006, the National Endowment for the Arts presented Nancy Sweezy with the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship. She was born October 14, 1921, in Flushing, New York, and died February 6, 2010, in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
Note: Information about the other objects is posted in the captions.
North Carolina Pottery Recently Found Throughout New England
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Please Stay Tuned...Much More to Come...
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