Jugtown Pottery
Jugtown Pottery and its founders, North Carolina natives Jacques and Juliana Busbee, revolutionized pottery making in the Seagrove area of North Carolina. That revolution began in the late 1920′s when the Busbees brought a young and impressionable country potter Ben Owen (1904 to 1982) to museums in New York City and Washington, D.C. That experience and the vision it stimulated continues to energize the 90+ potters that work in and around Seagrove today.
Before Jugtown Pottery (circa 1921 to present), Seagrove pottery was wheel-thrown utilitarian ware in forms handed down from the early 19th century. After Ben Owen’s trip north, he blended North Carolina traditional English jugs, storage jars and churns with 16th and 17th century Chinese and Korean forms. The result was artistic, clean, confident, beautiful, oriental and extremely popular.
The glazes that Jacques Busbee and Ben Owen researched are now Seagrove classics: tobacco spit (deep reddish brown), frogskin (mottled green), Chinese blue (an aqua/oxblood copper reduction), matte white and mirror black.
Side-by-side with their Asian influenced art pottery, Owen and his helpers mass produced hand-thrown dinnerware, bowls and mugs. It provided Jugtown with a financial base for its art pottery.
The pottery’s distinctive stamp, “Jugtown/Ware” in a circle surrounding a one-handle jug, was incised on pottery bottoms from 1922/23 to the present.
Ben Owen remained with Jugtown for 36 years (1923 to 1959). He then opened Plank Road Pottery which is now operated by his grandson, Ben Owen III as Ben Owen Pottery.
Other notable Jugtown potters include Charlie Teague (1921 to 1931/32), the first potter the Busbees recruited. After Ben Owen left there was Vernon Owens (1960 to present), Bobby Owens, Charles Moore (1960 to 2000), Boyce Yow, Nancy Sweezy and Pamela Owens.
The term “Jugtown” was applied to at least three North Carolina pottery-producing locales, some with a Jugtown postoffice. There was a Jugtown in Buncombe, Catawba and Moore counties.
Reference note by p4A.com Contributing Editor Pete Prunkl.