Col. Thomas J. Davies' Palmetto Fire Brick Works

Of all of the 19th Century Old Edgefield District potteries in South Carolina, the Col. Thomas Davies pottery site is one of the lesser known. In 1862, a carpenter and mechanic named Anson Peeler from Bennington, VT talked local cotton planter Col. Thomas Davies into establishing a firebrick factory in Bath, SC on the South Carolina Railroad. Davies provided the capital and slave laborers while Peeler built and managed the operation.

Peeler had been in the Bath, SC area since arriving with William Farrar in 1856 to build the nearby Southern Porcelain Manufacturing Company. Peeler served as head carpenter and built the mold house, ware shed, steam engine shed, woodsheds and all of the other buildings at Southern Porcelain Co.



William Farrar's residence was located at the Southern Porcelain site and was described in an Augusta, GA native's diary entry as quite elegant. Peeler probably built this structure and the workman's houses that sprouted up in the now vanished town of Kaolin, SC. Peeler had worked alongside Farrar while he was at the United States Pottery Company in Bennington before coming south. Peeler obviously possessed or gained a working knowledge of refractory and the kaolin clays surrounding both Bath, SC sites in the 6 years he had been around. Southern Porcelain Manufacturing Company also made firebrick in the short years they were in operation, including the incuse, stamped bricks that have been found, so Peeler had knowledge of the process. He brought the Palmetto Fire Brick Works into successful operation.

Recently, two brick have been found that seem to be a product of the company Peeler and Davies started. The incuse embossing on both brick is identical:

BATH FIRE BRICK WORKS

BATH, S.C.



Records show that the Palmetto Fire Brick Works was pressed into service during the Civil War years making crude utilitarian wares including jugs, jars and cups for the Confederate hospitals. Ceramics historian and author Edwin Atlee Barber interviewed Col. Davies at his home and saw examples of the wares made at Palmetto Fire Brick Works. Barber notes in his 1898 book Pottery and Porcelain of the United States that Davies' bricks were marked "Bath, S.C. Firebricks" and that they were equal in quality to any that had been imported". Barber notes the bricks were used extensively in the great furnaces of the south in manufacturing ordnance and in powder works, the closest being the Confederate Powder works a few miles away on the Augusta Canal.
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Augusta Powder Works, Augusta, GA
Barber also states the company grew quickly and manufactured crucibles and tiles for gas works. Barber talked at length with Col. Davies about the face jugs that the African slave workers began to produce there. He noted the kickwheels and long, horizontal kilns used in ceramic production at the works. He described the glaze on the pottery as a mixture of sand and ashes, which were black or brown, clumsy, but strong and admirably adapted for the needs of the time. Barber notes that production was suspended at the end of the war and that Davies then engaged in mining kaolin and china clays. The clay beds used by Davies and Southern Porcelain Company were some of the finest of the area's kaolin belt. Today, it is known as McNamee Clay and is prized in the manufacturing of numerous items, from porcelain to tires.

The Mysterious Face Jug

a slave-made face jug, circa 1860's

I think I've heard potters from at least 20 states claiming the face jug first appeared in their state. I live and make pots in what was called the Old Edgefield District of South Carolina. What is known as fact is that face jugs were made at the Col. Thomas Davies Factory near Bath, SC, at the Miles Mill stoneware factory and the B.F. Landrum Factory at Sunnybrooke near Vaucluse, SC in present day Aiken County.

Most of these early Edgefield District stoneware factories used slaves in the production of wares. Some of the last slaves to enter the United States came on the ship Wanderer to Savannah, GA in 1858. The importation of slaves had been illegal since 1808, but the institution of slavery was stilll legal.These slaves were then sent up to the South Carolina side of the Savannah River, one half mile below the mouth of Horse Creek, to the planters around Augusta, GA, Aiken and Edgefield. These slaves were from the Congo River area in West Africa and most likely played an important role in the evolution of the face jug.

It is believed that the slaves at some of the SC stoneware factories were allowed to make objects of their choosing during time when they were not working. Edwin Atlee Barber in his 1898 volume on Porcelain and Ceramics in America actually interviewed Col. Thomas J. Davies, owner of Palmetto Firebrick Works. Davies describes some of the slaves making these face vessels. Davies business ledgers show he owned 23 of the Wanderer slaves. I do believe the slaves were the makers and originators of these early crude face jugs. These early pieces had emphasis on the wite kaolin eyes and teeth. The glaze was wiped off of them before firing.

Ceramic historians debate whether the slaves were duplicating in clay symbolic icons of their African culture or whether they may have seen the popular Toby-mugs of that period which were made at Bennington Vermont. Affluent plantation masters were probably in possession of these Toby mugs since they were the latest rage. Also, and most importantly, the owners of the United States Pottery Company in Bennington, VT folded and moved to South Carolina to start a new porcelain works in 1856. This concern was called the Southern Porcelain Manufacturing Company and was located in Kaolin, SC (near Bath, SC) next door to Col. Thomas Davies pottery. There are publications where eye-witness accounts are given of English Toby figures which were incorporated into graves in the West African Congo Region in the 19th C. The Toby figure in England came to popularity in the 1760's as Staffordshire potters started producing these figures in 18th Century dress, i.e., tri-corn hats as mugs, jugs and pitchers.
At about the same time Southern Porcelain was in operation (late1850's), Col. Thomas Davies set up his factory (1862), the Palmetto Fire Brick Company next door making refractory fire brick and, later, ceramic items for use in Confederate hospitals. Slaves working for him may have been exposed to the Toby or face-style mugs and pitchers. I've done extensive research at the Southern Porcelain site and have found other spooky-looking satyrs on the porcelain molded pieces which were made there and could also have influenced slaves (see photo of shard) The slaves who worked in these potteries at various tasks, were considered more valuable than average slaves and were often "rented" out to neighboring potteries to settle debts or to generate additional income for their master. Numerous records in existence show this to be fact.

The Edgefield area and present day Aiken County had around 25 or so of these early stoneware factories operating from 1810 until about 1930. They produced millions of gallons of utilitarian items such as jugs, churns, jars, etc. This area was a proving ground. Many potters, black and white, learned their skills here and later migrated on to all of the southern states and as far west as Texas and even to Ohio. Most likely they carried the notion of the face jug with them.

The most famous of these potters was the enslaved African potter known as "Dave the Slave" or Dave Drake. Several fragments of face jugs were found at the long lost site called Stoney Bluff in Aiken County where Dave worked for many years. It is not known whether he might have made any face jugs. Ceramic historians seem to agree that the crude face jug, as we now know it, most likely came from these early SC factories.

Face jugs/pitchers/mugs have been made prior to the Edgefield face jugs. Even in ancient Egypt. Most of them are highly modeled and finished. It appears the Edgefield-style of crude face jugs, which is the subject of this piece, appeared about the same time (late 1850's) as the slaves from the Wanderer slave ship. The slaves were transported up the Savannah River to the Augusta, GA/ Edgefield, SC area from the Congo River in Western Africa. Some of these Wanderer slaves, i.e. "Romeo", Ward Lee and Tucker Henderson (pictured here after freedom) lived their lives out around the Miles Mill and the BF Landrum potteries near Eureka and Vaucluse, SC (present Aiken County) where these face jugs were found (from census records).

These 3 slaves, as well as the other Wanderer slaves achieved somewhat of a celebrity status throughout the country. The Wanderer's owner, Charles Lamar, had secretly smuggled these Congo-born African Americans into this country and violated the laws against slave importation which had been in effect for many years, making them some of the last captured humans pressed into slavery in the USA. They were the only group of slaves known collectively by the name of their ship of arrival. This triggered a congessional investigation and preceeding trial of the owner and captain of the ship. The trial, held in South Carolina, ended with a slap on the wrist for Lamar and was a mockery of justice carried forth by those who's interests were served by perpetuation of slavery. Lamar was allowed to serve his brief "time" in his luxury apartment in Savannah under house arrest.

The other pottery where face jugs were found was at the Col. Thomas Davies' Palmetto Firebrick Factory near Kaolin, SC. Some 137 of the Wanderer slaves disembarked from the steamboat Augusta at a wood yard near the Davies Factory on the SC side of the Savannah River. Charles Lamar, who owned the slave ship Wanderer, owned lands around Davies' pottery and also had interests in the Southern Porcelain Company at Kaolin, SC. Interestingly, Lamar was one of the last casualties of the war as he foolishly made a target of himself in a feined cavalry charge in Columbus, GA.

Upon examination, the crude Edgefield face jugs share many similarities with the reliquary objects from the area around western equatorial Africa where the Wanderer slaves came from, especially the fang peoples. These ceremonial wood carvings often had repeated applications of kaolin applied to the eyes

and teeth, much as kaolin was added to the face jugs for eyes and teeth in the Edgefield area potteries as a prominent feature. (Kaolin is a white china clay which is mined in South Carolina and Georgia on a large scale) Almost every decision and event, from crop planting to war, in the West African cultures involved the consultation of ancestoral spirits through these carved faces and masks in ceremonies and rituals. Fragments of ancestoral skulls, teeth and bone were stored in lidded bark baskets. The carved wooden heads and statues, called "byeri", were mounted on top of these sacred bone holding baskets.

It is easy to see that the Wanderer slaves who settled in and worked the potteries of the Edgefield area along Horse Creek would have been devastated without the single most important cultural item which they had to leave behind in Africa. Without concrete evidence, we can only visually compare these two different mediums for similarities, while realizing this crude style of face jug was not made prior to the Wanderer slaves arrival. Face jugs did spread across many parts of the USA after the 1860's, as potters migrated from the proving grounds of the Edgefield potteries. Take time to look at these byeri. The location and placement of facial features is remarkably similar to the Edgefield face jugs now in collections. It was also common in this region of West Africa to make ceramic effigies with human traits. Only certain tribal members could "blow" life into these vessels, giving them powers.

These 3 photos are carved-wood byeri from the Congo area, Central West Africa, circa 18oo’s

Following are several face jugs which are attributed to the BF Landrum, Miles Mill and Col. Thomas Davies pottery and are suspected to be slave-made.

An Amazing Tradition

I would like to invite you to view my work in the 20th Anniversary Show at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia, SC. I juried into this show which was wonderfully curated. It runs from April 25-Sept.7, 2008.












As more and more people become aware of the unique ceramic tradition that started in the Old Edgefield District of South Carolina, the prices at auction of the few old original pieces skyrocket. While I have not conducted an exhaustive survey of past and present American potters and sales of their work, I can state few have reached the prices being fetched by the famous slave potter, Dave Drake. With a single pot of his commanding well over $100k at auction, it is not only collectors who should sit up and take notice, but also ceramic historians and experts. True, and shameful, that Dave never received a dime from the sales of his pots. As a slave, he was required to make pots for his various masters.


Dave, more than any other factor, is responsible for the increased valuation on all of the Old Edgefield-style pottery, even that which was made when the tradition spread into Georgia and North Carolina. We know from the surviving pots, especially the pots Dave made and inscribed his original prose on, that he was much more than a pot turner. In a time when it was illegal for a slave to read or write, Dave proudly incised his poems and name, along with his master's name, boldly across pots which were shipped across the south as well as used locally. People who purchased them had to know something of why they were the only pots made with a cryptic couplet or bold script signiture. The historical record shows next to nothing about Dave other than him being sold or transfered to another master or showing up in a census count. Undoubtedly, people of the Old Edgefield District and beyond had to know something was special or unusual about Dave, even to the point of looking the other way in regard to laws of the time.

His cryptic prose and majestic pots are all we have to help us to try to look into the soul of this most unusual being. He shook the bonds which enslaved him for almost 70 years of his life when the Civil War ended and he was emancipated. Perhaps this next fact sheds more light on Dave, to me, than any other. A sherd was recovered recently which is inscribed in Dave's hand and dated 1867. Most assumed Dave stopped potting in 1865 with the end of the war. To me, I think Dave was a master potter and that his relationship with clay superceeded any monetary gains or concerns. I do hope that he was finally a master of his own destiny as well as recipient of whatever financial returns his pottery might have brought. But he continued at his advanced age, making the pots he had made for most of his life. He was a master in the medium of clay and unparalleled in American ceramics.

Oldest Pottery in North America

I love the old alkaline glazed pottery of the southern USA. This area has contributed greatly to the ceramic tradition of this country. Little did I realize just how much!

While doing research for an upcoming project for the area clay artists group, I stumbled upon some amazing facts that I was unaware of. The most important of these facts was that around 4,500 years before present time, ancient people of the Archaic period of civilization began making pottery on Stallings Island in the Savannah River near present day Augusta, GA, making it the oldest pottery in North America! These people are known as the Stallings Culture, after the Island they inhabited, and were the makers of fiber-tempered pottery vessels. Fiber-tempered means they added a member of the tillandsia family called "Spanish Moss" or a type of palm leaf to the clay in which they hand-formed the pottery from.

They had been cooking and eating their food out of animal skins. How, you might ask, did they cook in an animal skin? They heated rock in the fire and dropped the heated rocks into the pouch-like skin to bring the contents to a boil. The rock used appears to be soapstone at first. Later, they started baking clay balls to use in place of the soapstone since it was hard to come by in this area. Later, soapstone was also hollowed out into a cooking vessel which could be placed directly over the fire.

It appears the first fiber-tempered pottery, plain and undecorated, was used as serving bowls. Some 500 years later, designs were done by punching a reed or other sharp point and dragging it to the next spot.

The heated food was divided up into bowls and consumed. Can you picture the first early woman (I feel it was probably a woman since they maintained the fires and did all of the cooking) noticing a thin, hard, bowl-like shape that had formed in the damp clay depression where her cooking fire had been? I can see her prying it out and holding it to marvel and wonder about the possibilities. As she showed it to her family, they soon discovered that not only would it hold water without dissolving into mud, but that it made a mean Saber-Tooth Tiger stew pot! Just kidding, the tigers were gone at this point in time. But, you get the idea. What a momentous day it was for mankind until the y realized someone had to wash the bowl out after its use. Well.... guess who wound up inheriting that job? It was only fair, the woman invented it and she should wash it. Seriously, the male mind of the time traveled down a similar train of thought as those of today.


Early woman had discovered that when they sought to duplicate the process of the bowl made by the fire, it tended to crack, explode, etc. Somehow temper was discovered. The earliest temper, again, was plant fiber. Not long after, they discovered adding coarse sand for temper, which is what the balance of early native American pots have in them. Nowadays, we use ground-up fired clay grit or grog for our temper in clays we throw on the wheel or hand-build with for precisely the same reasons as our predecessors.

Our clay group will soon duplicate this ancient pottery-making process using hand-dug clay from the banks of the Savannah River. We will pinch the pots to form, crudely use the jab and drag decorating method and fire them in a small pit with open wood fire.

The following are some photos of pots made recently in the Stallings manner by me and my friend which were fired while burning some brush.

Pottery News...

I've spent some time making a few modifications to the groundhog kiln and am ready to try it out. A bag wall or baffle was placed in the rear of the kiln, creating a small chamber. The idea is to cut down on the smoke a bit, maybe even out temperatures some. Also, a cast refractory damper was installed in the chimney for better control of firing conditions. I hope the Augusta Fire Dept. Station 2 appreciates the extra sleep they'll be getting now!

We've also laid in quite a bit of wood. Much of it is still green and needs to dry for another 5 months or so. We've been cutting and hauling lots of pine slabs from the local sawmill. Owner David Ennis also lined me up with a new 18 inch chainsaw. It cuts through the mountains of wood like they were butter! It means a lot to us to recycle or use waste in firing the kiln. I can honestly say that 99.99% of wood burned is scavenged from sources that would otherwise discard it into landfills or ignite it to no purpose.





Recently, I came upon a snake jug I'd made many years ago. It felt like running into an old friend. I forget the many pieces I've made through the years, but always enjoy coming across them and I enjoy the esteem the owner holds it in. I guess in a way, these pieces from the past serve as somewhat of a report card for me or a marker of progress on this pottery journey I travel. I sometimes blush at old handles or jug lips. Often, it's the sheer weight that causes a brief wince. But, hey, that's what self-taught is all about. I love each and every one of them for the joy they brought creating them and am honored they reside proudly on mantles, tables and prominent shelves in their owners house and in their hearts as well.


This method of pottery making is so labor intensive! All tasks are just as important to the final pot as is the actual turning on the potter's wheel. Digging and blending the proper clay or cutting and stacking seasoned wood of the correct size, both are just as important as skillfully turning the pot. As a matter of fact, I might have to say the firing process even out-ranks all of the others in importance, for a mistake here cancels out all other efforts at bringing the pot to life.

Again, I become irate when I see others calling or describing their work as "Old Edgefield" or "Old Edgefield-Style" when they simply make pots like they do anywhere and fire them in an electric or gas kiln. They compete directly with me but have only a fraction of the work and effort that I must put into my pottery in order for me to use the word "Edgefield" in describing my art. My past posts show I'm a tireless crusader against those who are being untruthful in the representation of their work. It's so easy to tack the Edgefield word on to your pottery description and deceive buyers. However, ceramic historians and market prices will eventually relegate them to their appropriate level of status. I do commend potter Gregg Patton for his eBay sales where he describes his work as "Edgefield-Inspired". I like that term for work made with modern methods.

I'm proud to now have my work available at two new locations. In addition to the Augusta Canal Authority Museum, it is available in downtown Edgefield, SC in the SC National Heritage Corridor Center and Museum and at the Morris Museum of Art giftshop in downtown Augusta, GA. Thanks again to all who've supported me through purchases or other means and enable me to continue this tradition and important part of southern heritage!