A r t i n C l a y : Ma s t e r w o r


Where Have All the Flowers Gone?


by Johanna M. Brown “W


here have all the flowers gone?” Or more specifically, where is all of the


beautiful slip-decorated earthenware that used to be displayed in the Boys’ School? If we had a


The exhibit delighted and educated scholarly and casual visitors for many years. Fast forward to 2006. The Boys’ School pot-


tery exhibit, having been up for over thirty years, was in need of renovation. It had become clear that some of what we thought we knew about Moravian pottery might not have been altogeth- er accurate in light of more recent documentary and archaeological discoveries by independent scholars Luke Beckerdite and Rob Hunter, Old Salem’s Mo Hartley, Johanna Brown, and others. It seems potters working elsewhere in North Carolina may actually have made some of the pottery attributed to Moravian potters. What to do? Should we leave the exhibit in place even though it was no longer accurate? The answer came to us rather serendipitously. About the time we began to recognize the need


to rethink the pottery exhibit, the Chipstone Foundation, publisher of Ceramics in America, the leading American scholarly journal focusing on American ceramics research, approached Old Salem Museums & Gardens about collabo- rating on a major reevaluation of Piedmont North Carolina earthenware. This oppor- tunity to partner with one of the leading supporters of decorative arts


Photography by Gavin Ashworth, NYC.


dollar for every time someone has asked that question in the last four years, Old Salem could build a new pottery exhibit! To quote another song, “let’s start at the very


beginning.” Many of you are familiar with John Bivins’s seminal, The Moravian Potters in North Carolina, published in 1972. In that important publication, Bivins detailed the history of the Moravian pottery operation throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and iden- tified objects thought to have been made by Wachovia potters. An exhibition was mounted in the Salem Boys’ School building after publica- tion of the book. The exhibition allowed visitors to see many of the extraordinary utilitarian and decorative ceramic vessels illustrated in the book.


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research in the country was the impe- tus needed to get the ball rolling on the


reevaluation project. The results have been nothing short


of groundbreaking. Old Salem Museums &


Gardens, in partnership with the Chipstone Foundation, has undertaken a comprehensive and multi-faceted survey of North Carolina earthenware known as Art in Clay: Masterworks of North Carolina Earthenware. This three- year project explores early North Carolina earthenware potters and their enduring legacy, including not only the Moravians working in Wachovia, but also other clay clans working in communities east of Wachovia in what are now Alamance and Randolph counties. From


Old Salem Museums & Gardens


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