We recently studied some famous pottery history from slaves in the Antebellum South. Among some of the most curious traditions were face jugs made in the Edgefield Pottery Studios in South Carolina. Edgefield employed slaves in their pottery industries, where the tradition of face jugs, aka grotesque jugs, or ugly jugs. There are quite a few theories about these distorted face bottles. One is that slaves, who were forbidden to have tombstones, used these as graves, as was done in Africa to mark a burial site. Another theory is that the faces were meant to scare children away from the contents, such as alcohol.
These are some Edgefield pots created by slaves that survived the past century and a half or so:
My students in wheel throwing created some unique face jugs:
Jessica R
Sara C
