Friday, May 18, 2007

raanana,schmaranana-Alabama potter Jerry Brown throws a jug


Jerry Dolyn Brown was born in 1942 in Pine Springs Alabama. His parents, Horace Vincent Brown (1889-1965) and Hettie Mae Stewart Brown (1911-1996), were both products of multi-generational pottery making families. The Browns, one of the South's most famous pottery-making families, are usually associated with Georgia, but in fact, members of the family have also made pottery in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi. It is believed that Browns were potters in the late eighteenth century and possibly earlier. The Stewarts established a pottery in Louisville, Mississippi after moving there from Alabama shortly after the Civil War.
In 1982, Jerry reentered the pottery business and took advantage of an urban market interested in southern folk heritage. In 1985-1986, the Alabama State Council on the Arts and Appalshop shot and produced the film Unbroken Tradition. This documentary, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, documented pottery making at Jerry Brown's shop. This along with the new public consciousness of traditional Southern pottery encouraged Jerry's resolve to reenter the pottery business. You can visit Jerry and Sandra at their shop near Highway 78 in Hamilton.

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