The Moravian Potters in North Carolina

Bivins, John Jr.

Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Hardcover. Brown & cream cloth, decorative end pages, 300 pp. xiii, 276 bw plates. VG- (foxing along upper text block, corners bumped). Item #176765
ISBN: 9780807811917

Includes chapters on the master potters, the apprentices and journeymen, the materials, tools, and techniques, as well as glossaries of ceramic terms and Moravian terms. With photography by Bradford L. Rauschenberg. "In Wachovia, the various trash pits or middens associated with early Moravian inhabitants, as well as the potters' waster dumps, both in Bethabara and Salem, have provided us with significant insights into an incredibly complex eighteenth-and early nineteenth-century earthenware production. Although local antiquarians and collectors have been aware for many years that pottery constituted one of the largest early industries carried on by the Moravians in North Carolina, it was for the most part only the well-kept archival records that testified to this fact. Fine examples of slip-decorated pottery, as wekk as some utilitarian forms, existed in local collections and in the Wachovia Museum in Old Salem, but it was not until the excavations at Bethabara were begun that anyone became aware of the real significance of the tradition in which local potters were working." -- pg. 4.