Face Jugs with Jim McDowell | NewsDepth: Sketchbook

Jim McDowell honors his ancestors by making traditional pottery know as "ugly jugs" or "face jugs." Find out about the serious history they represent in this Sketchbook.
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READ THE SCRIPT:
I'm a storyteller. So I tell the story. And I tell the story in my jugs. My jugs reflect the scarification. My jugs reflect the rite of passage. My jugs reflect the struggle. I'm doing it to honor my ancestors. I'm the black potter.

Now, the history of the face jugs is that in Africa they had an ancestor worship. When they took 'em into slavery, they took 'em to the islands to acclimate them. They picked up Voodoo and all that Hoodoo stuff. And then when they got to the United States, the missioners quickly tried to convert them to Christianity. So they amalgamated all those three religions, ancestor worship in Africa, Voodoo in Jamaica, and Christianity, and they came up with the ugly jug.

The ugly jug premise is anything that you possess, your hat, your clothing, your pots and pans, your spirit resides in it. And so, when you die, they put it on your grave. You wasn't allowed to have a grave marker, because they did not consider you a person. You were chattel. And so you put the grave marker on the grave, and it scared the devil away so your soul could go to heaven. That's what they believed. The thing about the face jugs for me is to tell the story of what was going on at that time.

Now, slave potter Dave was a slave who was owned by some people in Edgefield, South Carolina. And Dave, as a young boy, grew up on the plantation. So one day they asked him would he like to learn how to throw. So the person that owned him, they taught him how to throw. But also they taught him how to read and write and set type. They had a newspaper company called The Hive, and Dave could set type, read and write.

The one thing that I do know in honor of slave potter Dave, I write things on my jug, like "I can read." Now, they could write and read, but sometimes they would spell read R-E-E-D instead of R-E-A-D. And sometimes they would write things that were phonetically. And he would write things on 'em like "I belong to Mr. Myles, where the pot boils in the oven.” "Give me silver, give me gold. "Lead not good for your soul." He would write all kind of things on the jugs, and then he would sign it LM. That was the people that owned him. And then he would put "Dave", and he would put the year.

So I think what I'm gonna make now is a face jug body. So, I usually make about four or five bodies, and then the revelation or the inspiration of what I'm making comes later. I'm more concerned with trying to stay with the African tradition. Everything that you do of joining together is also a design.

And also, when I get this to the kiln, I can put glass here and have it run down. I'll put scarification, I'll put the scratchings, I'll do all kind of other things to it later. But I want to get it together today, right now, so that it will be ready to go when I get that that point. 'Cause different things come to me at different times.

I gotta be aware and ready to work when I get an idea. I'm not striving for realism, no. I want to approximate that and do what the slave potters did. And I think I'm a continuation of what they did. So I make things that refer to the black experience. I'm trying to keep the story alive, because if we don't keep the story alive, we're doomed to do it again.
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