Seagrove Pottery Dot and Walter Auman

 A Saturday Video for you all to watch.

Seagrove Pottery

Oh, no snow!

Mark and I have been working back in the studio to get pots ready for the first gas firing.
Mark has been working on some vases.
This one is nice and fat with a presents to it.

I  turned plates yesterday and plan to get them trimmed up before the snow sets in or the possibilities of no electricity happens.
That is the problem with winter storms.
It is hard to get out to the studio, and if we lose electricity it shuts things down.
We had our electricity turned off a week or so back and I posted on how we just closed for the day and went off.
On the comments someone asked where our kick wheel was.
I had to laugh because it reminded me of Dot Auman.
There were so many times folks would stop in and while watching Dot make pots they would ask her where her kick wheel was.
She would look over and then look past them out into the parking lot.
They would turn and ask what she was looking for.
And she would say, "I am looking for your horse and buggy.
This always made me chuckle.

May all your ice and snow melt away soon and the spring flowers come your way.

A Story- part one

While I am still rummaging through my past and trying desperately to stay in the present I am full of thoughts about some of the older potters from my past.
Dorothy and Walter Auman keep playing in my brain.
I am trying to figure out where to start with them.
The Auman's were such a big part of my life.
They were friends of my grandparents so my memories of them and their son Walt Jr. go way back.
I remember thinking they were not like the friends of my parents who were city people.
My first memory of Dorothy Auman was out at the pond.
We had fished and then cooked out.
There was a bonfire and I was hanging around listening to the adults laugh and talk. I don't remember the conversation, but I remember being struck by Dorothy and Walter's laughter.
I remember thinking they were so different from the farm families who lived around the farm. They were a bit more wordily and lively.
I was taken back by Dorothy's out going personality, quick smile, good wit and her laughter.

Years later when I was 17 I would take my first solo trip to see my grandparents.
My mother walked up to me and said, " Go see your grandparents, you have some vacation time and they would like to see you."
She handed me the car keys and said , "we will map out the route."
It was my first trip alone, just me and the open road I was excited.
My mother's car was a Red VW camper. The one that popped up and had a refrigerator in it.
We all thought it was super cool and here I was taking it for a ride to the depths of central NC.
My mother was a High school math teacher, all the family and kids at school called the VW Big Red.
A double meaning since my mother was a redhead and not a small women.
Anyway, I took the keys and set off for the farm.
I made one stop over in Chapel Hill to visit with my Godfather and family then on the the farm.

This was the first time I would spend time alone on the farm with my grandparents.
Now, talk about being treated like royalty it was great fun.
My grandparents were great people who had traveled all over the world before settling back in Seagrove, or, I should say Whynot, to farm.
Even though there were cows to be taken care of and grass to be mowed we spent a lot of time out and about the nieghborhood and small towns.

One afternoon while I was there my grandmother and I stopped to see Dorothy in the pottery shop.
I have memories of Cole's pottery as a child and Seagrove Pottery, the Auman's shop, but this time it was different.
We walked in to find Dorothy in her usual place behind the wheel making pots and yes standing and talking.
I was looking around, really taking in the work for what I think was the first time.
There were several small rooms off to the left and I wandered through looking at bowls, mugs, teapots, plates, pitchers, jugs and pots, pots and more pots.
I walked back out to stand next to my Grandmother to watch Dorothy turn.
I looked at Dorothy at the pots she was making and a feeling, that even today I have a hard time describing, came over me so strong and powerful that I started to pass out.
My grandmother grabbed an arm, Dorothy shot out from behind her wheel grabbed the other arm and they both sat me in a chair, placed a coke in my hands and started fanning me.
I was embarrassed beyond belief.
Like two mother hens they felt I should go rest, but really the feeling was gone.

I have thought about this over the years.
I think that if I was in tune with a place deep within me I could have somehow seen how many times I would walk through that door, look at pots made by Dorothy and glazed by Walter.
It was as if my 17 year old self felt something there, on that day, that would be such a big part of my life.
In fact, if not for Dorothy and Walter and the many days and ways they influenced my life I don't know what direction I would have taken.
If I never moved to Seagrove what would I have done?
Who would I have been?
Would I have ever touched clay, become a potter?

This is just a beginning.
I have so much Dorothy and Walter in me.
I know there will be more.
Let's just call this part one.


I found this interview done with Dot and Walter In 1983
go over for a good read.

North Carolina Pottery

Living and spending all my youth in Seagrove has had some effect on how I view pottery. How could it not.
My early years were shaped by the potters who made pots back in the late 50's and early 60's.
These were my grandparents friends and relatives.
Me, the city kid, and a bit prissy, did not know how much I would absorb from these folks.
I mean, to me, they were first off old.
Not so old now that I am heading down that path.
And second off pottery was, you know, messy.
I told you I was prissy, but give me a break I was a city kid and about seven when I really started this adventure.
When I would visit with the grandparents we spent time with Dot and Walter Auman and Phil and Nell Cole graves.
We also spent time at their pottery shops, which ran like well oiled machines.
There was a job for every step and a person for every job.
If you were the "turner" there was a ball person for you.
You stood at the wheel making pots, while someone else, using a list, made up all the balls of clay you would need for the day.
( how would you like that time saver?)
There was someone else to take off what you have made and fix the pots and put on handles.
(another time saver!)
Someone else did the glazing, no thought process for you.
Someone else loaded and fired the kilns.
And, pots were then unloaded by a crew for the show room.
There was a division of labor.
This was as close to factory as you could get for a handmade item.
Not like most of of today.
Dot would call us "studio potters."
Her explanation to me was, " you do it all, you do every step of the process, not letting go of the object until it is up for sale."
I sometimes think of those well oiled machines of the past and think they had some real in site into how much work it took to get it from the very first step, mixing the clay, to the last step, for someone to buy and enjoy.
And yet even with all this knowledge I took the step to be a studio potter.
I still like to make my own, glaze it and look at the final work and know it is mine or Mark's.
Yes we do have some help now and again, but I can still pick out my work or his.
For the good and the bad.
I have an older brother who also traveled this path with me.
( well there are 5 of us and we are all pottery lovers.)
He has been collected pottery over the years while I went on to be the potter.
He has written some ace articles on NC pottery on his blog Backcounty Notes.
He just posted up a new post on one of my favorite shapes, North Carolina Jugs.
Give it a read and poke through his other articles on pottery I think you will enjoy them.
Cheers!
M