Friday, February 26, 2010

...some Yankee coming in and running the show


In the rolling Piedmont hills of North Carolina, potters were turning out fine work before the American Revolution. But by the 20th century, the tradition had faltered. Two passionate women, a half-century apart, saved it.
Nancy Sweezy, who died at the age of 88 in Cambridge, Mass., on Feb. 6, was the second.
Riding a surge of interest in folk arts in the 1960s and 1970s, Ms. Sweezy revived Jugtown, the famous pottery that the first of the two women, Juliana Royster Busbee, started in 1917.
Ms. Sweezy begged and borrowed $22,500 to buy the financially staggering Jugtown in 1968. She came up with new glazes to replace ones that used lead, and gave them names like Blueridge Blue and Dogwood White.
(read more...)
Thanks to Tessa.

No comments:

Post a Comment