NEWS

Learning from UNC collections, Cherokee potters to teach students about ancestors' craftsmanship

By DAVID WILLIAMSON
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Cherokee potters Amanda Swimmer, Betty Maney and Davy Arch will demonstrate their once-lost art on Thursday (Sept. 19) at a workshop for University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill undergraduates and the public.

The workshop, which will begin at 4:30 p.m. on McCorkle Place, is a featured event of the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence Art/Spirit/Art exhibition on display through September. It is being co-sponsored by the Johnston Center, UNC Research Laboratories of Archaeology, the Carolina Indian Circle and the Folklife Program of the North Carolina Arts Council.

An outgrowth of a unique collaboration between UNC archaeologists and Cherokee potters, the event is part of an initiative to reinvigorate traditional pottery styles among Cherokee artists. Through a series of hands-on activities this year, the archaeologists have shared the Research Laboratories of Archaeology's extensive collection of early pottery with Cherokee, N.C., potters interested in re-creating the pre-1900 wares.

"The significance of this program is that we are taking archaeological collections and putting them into use for the modern native community," said Dr. Brett Riggs, research archaeologist at the UNC labs and former deputy tribal historic preservation officer in Cherokee. "It’s a new use for these public resources. We hope collaboration will help dissolve long-standing barriers between native communities and archaeologists and that these materials will contribute to continuing craft traditions in the Cherokee community."

In April, Riggs visited Cherokee with 25 well-documented, mostly complete vessels ranging in age from about 115 to 500 years. "Potters need to see a good series of the older style pottery to gain their own intuitive understanding of it," he said. "These folks have long seen bits and pieces of old traditional pottery around their garden plots, but it’s hard to make sense of these fragments if you haven't seen the whole vessels."

During the sessions, funded by the Folklife Program of the N.C. Arts Council and the Museum of the Cherokee Indian, contemporary Cherokee potters, many of whom have long family traditions in pottery, examined and analyzed the pieces for themselves, then experimented with the forms, decorations and manufacturing techniques evident in the ancient ceramics.

Tammy Beane, a ceramist and expert in hand-built Southeastern pottery, assisted the artists in their analysis of technical aspects of the traditional pottery and coached the artists in their efforts to recreate the wares.

Until the late 19th century, many Cherokees in western North Carolina made their own utilitarian wares for home use, Riggs said. Those were generally large hominy jars with carved wooden paddle-stamped designs on the exterior and blackened, burnished interiors. Potters sealed the porous earthenware vessels with tasteless soot from burned corncobs, creating a kind of "Cherokee Teflon" that allowed the vessels to hold and cook liquids.

Around 1880, practical uses for homemade pottery began to wane, but potters turned to an emerging tourist market to sell their creations, he said. Among the potters in Cherokee were several Catawba women who had long made and sold plain, polished wares to tourists. Seeing the success and market expertise of the Catawbas, Cherokee potters adapted Catawba styles to their own needs. Cherokee pottery now is an outgrowth of this late 19^th century trend.

"Some modern Cherokee potters seek to revive the older, more distinctively Cherokee ceramic styles to appeal to an increasingly discriminating art market," Riggs said. "Some of these potters are descended from the folks who made the documented 19th century vessels we have in the collection.

"These are master potters," he said. "They know what they’re doing. We’re making the collection available so they can learn and be informed by their own ancestors’ work."

For more information, contact Riggs at (919) 962-3843 or bhriggs@unc.edu.

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Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596