Edgefield District, South Carolina, circa 1860s, diminutive tapered ovoid jug form, green and dark brown speckled alkaline glaze, inset pierced kaolin eyes, inset impressed kaolin teeth, applied facial features including comma form ears with tragi, arching eyebrows and pinched nose, collared spout, applied strap handle, attributed to an enslaved African American craftsman, likely associated with the Thomas Davies's Palmetto Firebrick Works in Bath, Aiken County, S.C., 4-3/4 in.

Provenance: From the Folklife Collection of Southern Pottery Scholar, Author and Professor of English at Georgia State University, Dr. John Burrison, Atlanta, Georgia, purchased by the consignor from Jimmy Allen in 1983, Mr. Allen purchased it from a dealer at the Elco's antiques market around the same time.

Note: In the catalog description from Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South, John Burrison, University of Georgia Press, 2000, pg. 120, cat. no. 184, Burrison writes, "Ceramics historian Edwin Atlee Barber wrote of these early southern face vessels in 1909. 'The modelling reveals a trace of aboriginal art as formerly practised by the ancestors of the makers of in the Dark Continent.' "Spirit Pots" in human form were kept at ancestral shrines in Nigeria and Cameroon, but English, German, southeastern Indian and (as early as 1840) white Edgefield potters also made anthropomorphic wares, and African connections remain to be established. The meaning and use of the slave-made examples are unknown, but the angry faces with their bared kaolin teeth suggest protest against enslavement."

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: Shaping Traditions: Folk Arts in a Changing South, John Burrison, University of Georgia Press, 2000, pg. 57, description on pg. 120, cat. no. 184