Pottery

Missed stitches! Another early piece and I missed a couple of stitches and thus have a lopsided pot!

Interesting Seguin facts: In 1857 John McCamey Wilson, a Presbyterian minister and educator, established the first Wilson pottery. Wilson was not a potter, so the initial pottery operations were probably conducted by his slave potters, Hiram, James, George, and Andrew Wilson.

At various exhibits and talks in Seguin, I've seen some of the pottery (and photos of the pottery and early site).


The following is copied from Magazine Antiques, December 2002 issue

"One of the most important Texas potters was John McKamey Wilson Jr., who, about 1857, established the Guadalupe Pottery in Guadalupe County near Seguin, Texas. Wilson was a clergyman, lawyer, teacher, and planter, but had never been trained in pottery making. Clearly his slaves were adept, for it was they who labored in his pottery works. Pottery in Texas was fired in a groundhog kiln, so named because part of the kiln is buried in the earth. As in Edgefield, potters at Guadalupe initially used alkaline, or ash, glazes. These were common to potteries in the Deep South and are notable for the variety of colors they produced, from yellow and green to reddish and dark brown. Later Guadalupe potters used salt glazes. After emancipation the former salves became employees of the pottery, and, after the Civil War, Wilson took on a partner, Marion J. Durham, to whom he sold the pottery in 1869.

"At this point a group of former slaves, Hyrum, James, Wallace, Andrew, and George, all having taken the surname Wilson, decided to establish their own pottery in a region called Capote. H. Wilson and Company, as the pottery was known, produced only salt-glazed stonewares and, rather unusually, often marked their products. Another distinguishing characteristic of their output is the horseshoe shape of the handles on their jars and jugs in contrast to the crescent-shaped handles used almost everywhere else in the South.

"A booklet with the same title as the exhibition has been published by the museum. It is written by Michael K. Brown, the curator of the Bayou Bend Collection in Houston, and may be obtained by telephoning 713-639-7360."

Ms. Laverne Lewis Britt, the great, great granddaughter of Hiram Wilson is the author of the In Praise of Hiram Wilson The Story of a 19th Century Guadalupe County Potter. Copies can be purchased by writing to the Wilson Pottery Foundation at: P.O. Box 681802, San Antonio, TX 78268. Her book tells the in depth story of a man who owned a pottery business and later became a Reverend among many other accomplishments.

http://www.wilsonpotteryfoundation.org/
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/WW/pkwvk.html
http://seguingazette.com/story.lasso?ewcd=70c8e41847ecf15a