(Mossy Creek, White County, Georgia, 1917-1998) circa 1974, dark shiny and light matte olive green alkaline ash glaze over entire head shaped form, inset kaolin eyes with black pupils, applied facial features including eyebrows, ears, pinched elongated nose, eyelids and lips, inset rock teeth, hole in top of form, inscribed "Lanier Meaders" on base, 8-3/4 in. 

Provenance: From the Folklife Collection of Southern Pottery Scholar, Author and Professor of English at Georgia State University, Dr. John Burrison, Atlanta, Georgia

Note: In the catalog description from Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South, John Burrison, University of Georgia Press, 2000, pg. 127, cat. no. 266, Burrison writes, "Inspired by local teenagers who dressed up his face jugs with wigs and hats, Lanier made a small number of these wheel thrown heads, one of which he enjoyed at home topped with an orange wig."

Exhibited: Previously on Loan at the Atlanta History Center for viewing in the exhibition Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in the Changing South from 1996 to 2024

Illustrated: Brothers in Clay: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery, John Burrison, University of Georgia Press, 1983, color plate 11, and pg. 272, and Ceramics in America, 2006, edited by Rob Hunter, Fluid Vessel: Journey of the Jug, John Burrison, pg 115, figure 41