Graveyard Pots

Here is an interesting artical from Ceramics Monthly, April, 1967 about traditional flower pots for American graveyards.

We had often heard the older potters in our area refer to the graveyard pots and markers their ancestors made, but though we had searched many old cemeteries in North and South Carolina, we could not find any surviving examples of this unique American tradition. When a neighbour told us recently that there were several graveyard pots in the older section of the cemetery where her family is buried, we dropped all work and drove to the graveyard.

It was one that we had visited before, but the pots had eluded us so well as several generation of passers by because the old section of the cemetery, some distance from the new, was quite grown- up in weeds and shrubs.

There, adorning forgotten graves dating from the 1830s to 1900, were more than thirty fine examples of traditional graveyard pots. None of these had escaped the ravages of time, for they were cracked and chipped, and some were badly broken. But the presence of hundreds of shards was a mute testament to the number of pots that once were there.

The urns, vases, and flower pots which had survived, however, were whole enough to have preserved their simple form and beauty. This section of South Carolina is rich in potting legend, but few examples by the dozen or more potters who kept shop up until the early 1900s have survived.

The fields are covered with shards, but only a few churns and pitchers remain to tell of the work of such men as Brown, Fullbright, Clayton, Belcher. Atkins. Williams, Van Patton and Johnson, all of whom had potteries within a ten-mile radius. Their community was called “Jugtown” (not to be confused with the well- known Jugtown, North Carolina). There is no way to tell now which of these potters made the surviving graveyard pots, for it was never the custom for the potters to sign their work, but the pots do represent the skills of at least a half-dozen different potters.

Only one badly-damaged grave marker (illustrated) has survived, but old-timers in the area remember when they were many. It was reportedly the custom for potters’ own graves, and those of their families, to be distinguished by such markers. These graveyard pots are a testament to the ability and imagination of nineteenth century American potters. The same potters who took extra time to make the painstaking decoration on these graveyard pots were content to make perfectly plain vessels for everyday use. The pots were often the only adornment for graves marked with a fieldstone or crudely-lettered tombstone. Since it was the custom, until recent years, for rural churches and families to take constant interest in the appearance of their graveyards, it is probable that the vases were often filled with fresh flowers.