
          An Alabama Potter Stays with Tradition
          By Gates, DarrylDarryl Gates
          Vol. 10, No. 4, 1988, pp. 18-19
          
          Jerry Brown has the thick, strong arms of a lumberjack. His large
hands, broad shoulders and barrel chest complete the image. But it's
Brown's gentle, slightly impish smile you notice first. This is a man,
you think, who truly likes what he does.
          Brown is a ninth-generation potter, perhaps the most traditional of
the half-dozen or so traditional potters left in the United States,
according to folklorists. He has devoted his life to digging north
Alabama clay from a hardwood forest and turning it into churns, jugs
and jars that were once a necessity in every rural kitchen. Brown's
pottery may no longer be needed in country kitchens, yet each piece
now documents a cultural past.
          "Jerry is pretty much traditional in every sense--from digging
his own clay, to a mule-driven pug mill, to a wood-filled modified
groundhog kiln," says Henry Willett, regional representative for
the National Endowment for the Arts.
          Gradually, Brown's old-fashioned practice of his craft have made
him well-known. In 1984, he was one of a handful of traditional
potters invited to show his skill et the Smithsonian's annual summer
folklife demonstrations. He and his work have been featured in books
on Southern pottery and a documentary film is in progress.
          Despite his growing fame, Brown lives a simple life. If his pottery
shop resembles a hay barn, it's because it was one; if his arms
resemble those of a logger, it's because he cut sawmill timber for
twenty years.
          As a child, Brown and his brother watched their father, Horace
V. "Jug" Brown, turn out preserving jars and butter churns by the
hundreds. "My brother and I were making small pieces back before we
started first grade," he recalls.
          When Brown was twenty-two, his father retired from making pottery
and turned the business over to his two sons. Then tragedy struck
twice. Brown's brother was killed in an automobile accident. Soon
after that, the family's pottery equipment was stolen. Brown gave up
pottery for two decades.
          But the logging business is seasonal and during the wet winter
months, Brown and his family suffered financially. One rainy night he
told his wife he was going to make a pottery shop out of the old hay
barn. He sold the hay and bought an electric kiln; his cousin made him
a foot-powered pottery wheel. Two weeks after selling his hay, Brown
fired his first pot, but he admits it took him about six months "to
get the feel."
          That was nearly seven years ago. Today his pottery shop in the
Marion County foothills of northwest Alabama hasn't changed much--it
still looks like a hay barn with a wide brick chimney at one end. Nor
have his tools changed much: an old sponge, a smaller sponge on a
stick, a table fork, a paint brush and a metal "rib" used to smooth
and shape the soft clay.
          The electric kiln is gone, however. Brown couldn't get the results
he wanted so he built a wood-fired "modified groundhog kiln."
Old-timers built their groundhog kilns into the side of a hill for
added insulation. Brown made his own hill from more than a thousand
pounds of clay, now melted into a granite-hard dome.
          He combines oak slabs and smaller pieces of dry pine in the kiln to
produce temperatures up to 3,000 degrees. Pine resin released during
the twelve to fifteen hours of firing 

puts a slicker finish on the glaze, he says.
          Gone too is the foot-powered pottery wheel that forces a potter to
stand on one leg and pump a foot pedal with the other. "I was glad
to see those kick wheels go out of style," Brown says with a
smile. Two years ago he was able to recover the wheel his father and
uncle used, the one made from a fifty-year-old automobile differential
and powered by electricity.
          In a typical working day, Brown makes one three-gallon churn after
another. His clay-coated arms move effortlessly, pulling a perfectly
formed churn from a lifeless lump of clay the color of a winter
sky. When each churn is finished he picks up a worn piece of wood
about the size of a tongue depresser to measure its opening, but he
doesn't need to. Each piece is exactly the same size. Perfect.
          Brown's pottery is formed from clay mined from a nearby pit, about
a five-mile trip down dirt roads and a jeep trail that winds through
thick woods. For a hundred years potters in the Hamilton area have
been digging clay from that pit. Brown picks the clay himself and
loads his pickup (during wet weather he often needs two mules to pull
out the mired truck).
          Back at his shop, Brown cuts up the hard lumps and dumps up to
1,500 pounds of clay into the only known mule-driven "pug" mill in the
United States. The clay is mixed for a couple of hours with up to
thirty gallons of water to reach a uniform consistency. Then the clay
is fed into a strainer where a hydraulic piston pushes it through a
screen, separating clay from small rocks and other trash. Pure
clay--like strands of spaghetti--oozes out the other side. It's now
ready for Brown's wheel.
          When a lump of clay hits the wheel it looks like a lopsided cake
waiting for frosting. And it's heavy--a six-gallon churn starts out
weighing thirty-two pounds. The largest Brown has made, a
twelve-gallon churn, weighed sixty pounds resting on the wheel.
          Brown's strong arms literally pull the clay into shape on the
rotating wheel. First, he makes the bottom round, then creates a "ball
opening" by using his hands and a piece of wood to form a thick, short
bowl. He closes the bowl inward, then, squeezing and pulling, raises
the piece from the wheel until it looks like a squatty flower pot
about eight inches high. With one arm inside pushing, he uses his
knuckles of his other hand to pull the vessel another foot or so to
its proper height in what's known as a "knuckle pull."
          His next step is to take a thin piece of metal--the rib--in his
right hand, place his left hand inside the vessel, and use the rib to
smooth the outside. With his final pull, he gives the vessel its
shape. He makes a rim for a lid and then sponges the vessel to smooth
the rough spots.
          About an hour after he makes a piece, Brown turns it over so it
will dry without warping the rim. He makes a lid if the piece needs
one, adds handles if he chooses, and dips the piece in one of his
glazing solutions. Then it's ready to be fired.
          Brown dips his arms into a plastic bucket and washes off the
crusted clay, then heads out to stoke his roaring kiln. Flames shoot
about ten feet from the top of the kiln's brick chimney and the sky
above his shop fills with thick, black smoke.
          Another reason I got back into this," he says, "is
because I didn't want the tradition to die with me. I'm the ninth
generation, you know. I'm the only one that makes and sells churns
above three gallons, I reckon, in the United States. I'd like to see
my family carry it on, you know."
          He has two sons in their twenties. So far they've shown interest in
continuing the tradition, even turning out some pretty good-looking
pieces Brown proudly displays in his shop.
          "It's a dying art," he says, shaking his head. "It'a been
a tradition in the South for years and years. It would be a shame to
see it die out. I'm going to do my best to see it stay."
          Willett and Joey Brackner, folk arts program manager for the
Alabama State Council on the Arts in Montgomery, have been working
with a Kentucky film company, AppalShop, to produce a documentary on
Jerry and his work. The film is expected to be ready by the fall,
Brackner said, and will probably be shown on Alabama Public
Television. The film excites Brown and he hopes it will help boost
business.
          "I've known all kinds of potters," he says, abut I've never
known one that was rich. We ain't got a lot, but I know what we have,
we came by it honestly.
          
            Darryl Gates is the editor of AREA
Magazine. Signed pieces of Jerry Brown's pottery are available
through his shop in Hamilton, Ala., (205) 921-9483.
          
        