From Mud to Jug
The Folk Potters and Pottery of Northeast Georgia

John A. Burrison

Celebrating the history and living traditions of the renowned northeast Georgia folk pottery clans

Reviews

“This is a neat little volume, one that is needed, given the current trends in Georgia pottery. The north Georgia region has now become the center of folk pottery for the state; the Meaders and Hewell families have national reputations; the Hewells’ Turning and Burning Festival draws more and more people; and the new Folk Pottery Museum of Northeast Georgia will attract newcomers and educate them into the local traditions. And of course, no one better understands Southern folk pottery than John Burrison.”
—Charles G. Zug III, author of Turners and Burners: The Folk Potters of North Carolina

“Anyone with a serious mud-love must read this comprehensive chronicle of one of America’s most vital and venerable pottery traditions. Each page bursts with beauty and insight, describing a tradition that relentlessly rejuvenates itself and brims with potential at every turn of the wheel.”
—Mark Hewitt, coauthor of The Potter’s Eye: Art and Tradition in North Carolina Pottery


Description
John Michael Vlach called Brothers in Clay “not only the best study of American stoneware pottery now available but also a fine model for the presentation and analysis of hand-based technologies.” The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss noted, “Mr. Burrison has brought to this undertaking a sensitivity, a finesse, and a flair for description and analysis that entitle the book to a place among the classics of this type.”

From Mud to Jug—both a companion and sequel to Brothers in Clay—deepens and enriches Burrison’s earlier study by focusing on the northeast corner of Georgia, which has maintained a continuous tradition of pottery making since the early nineteenth century. Through interviews, a census of active potters trained at the centers of Cleveland (White County) and Gillsville (Hall County), and more than one hundred color photographs of pots, potters, and their work spaces, Burrison captures the living tradition of one of the last areas…

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Series/imprint:
A Wormsloe Foundation Publication

Page count: 180 pp.
106 color and 24 b&w photos; 3 maps
Trim size: 8 x 10
  

Paper
List price: $29.95
Your price: 978-0-8203-3325-0
03/15/2010

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John A. Burrison is a professor of English and director of the folklore curriculum at Georgia State University. In addition to Brothers in Clay, he is the editor of Storytellers: Folktales and Legends from the South and the author of Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South.