Pisgah Forest Pottery
At the 2006 Arts & Crafts Conference pottery dealer and former American Art Pottery Association President Linda Carrigan described Pisgah Forest Pottery as “underappreciated.” She listed the North Carolina pottery among the most collectible art pottery in the post-1925 period.
Walter B. Stephen (1876 to 1961) opened Pisgah Forest Pottery in 1926. It barely survives today (2006) operated by Stephen’s step-grandson, Tom Case assisted by contemporary potter Rodney Leftwich.
Stephen’s most enduring style was cameo ware, a Jasperware technique he developed between 1901 and 1910 at Nonconnah Pottery (1901 to 1916). Clay slip was applied freehand in multiple layers to create scenes of early Americana such as buffalo hunts or farmers plowing. One scene popularized the line. Over 85% of Pisgah Forest cameo ware featured a white slip decorated “Westward Ho” scene. And the vast majority of the ox-drawn covered wagons faced to the right. Rodney Leftwich, author of a new book on Pisgah Forest Pottery, explained that when Stephen exited his Arden, North Carolina, home in the Blue Ridge Mountains, west was to his right.
Stephen experimented with molded cameo ware decorations in the 1940′s and 1950′s. An English craftsman who had worked for Wedgwood crafted a mold of square dancers and a musician, Pisgah Forest’s most popular molded cameo ware.
Among Stephen’s trademark glazes at Pisgah Forest were turquoise crackle, oriental caledon, crystalline and oxblood copper. He often combined colors on a single piece blending the glazes with a featheredge. The most popular combination was turquoise and wine, a trademark of the pottery. Forms were mostly oriental.
Rodney Leftwich believes that Stephen’s best work was produced in the 1930′s, a time when hotels in western North Carolina demanded locally made goods for the tourist trade. Stephen also produced hand-thrown dinnerware during the 1930′s and 1940′s to help pay the bills. Most Pisgah Forest Pottery was marked with a potter at the wheel and dated from 1927 to 1954 and then later in 1995 to the present. Nearly all Pisgah Forest pottery was hand thrown.
Stephen continued throwing and decorating pottery into his late 80′s, but it was not his best work. By then, said Leftwich, Stephen had lost some of his eyesight and hand steadiness.
Reference note by p4A.com Contributing Editor Pete Prunkl.