Messengers from the Past

2012-08-27T14:25:01-04:00

Messengers from the Past

Carole C. Wahler

Pottery making is thousands of years old. The earliest clay objects were figurals for ritual purposes. Pottery, however, is fragile. Partially due to this fragility, utilitarian pottery traditions did not develop until there were relatively settled societies. Almost paradoxically, this very tendency to break has proven invaluable to archaeologists. Discarded pottery sherds become one of the most informative and indestructible of human artifacts.

Settled societies required containers for storing, preparing and serving food and beverages. While wood, metal and glass objects were available, they all had drawbacks in addition to being relatively expensive.

Earthenware provided the solution. The clay was universally available and inexpensive. Lead glazes were developed to provide an effective seal on earthenware’s porous surface hundreds of years before Christ. Around 1700 scientists became aware of lead poisoning of potters. By the early 1800s poisoning due to consuming food or beverages stored in lead glazed vessels was well known. Thus, stoneware began to replace earthenware. Vessels made of stoneware avoided the dangers of lead poisoning, were more durable and non-porous. Salt glazes were generally added for ease in cleaning as well as for aesthetics. European production of salt glazed stoneware began along the Rhein in the 15th century.

Stoneware clay while similar to earthenware, is higher in silica and not available in all areas. A potter not only had to be skilled specifically in the manufacture of stoneware; he also had to be able to identify and secure the necessary clay.

Surprisingly, throughout most of the 19th century, earthenware and stoneware were made simultaneously in East Tennessee. This was undoubtedly due to economic factors such as a well established early earthenware tradition and the relative scarcity of stoneware clays.

Since historians have concluded that in 1772 there were approximately seventy plantations in what is now Carter County, it is reasonable to assume that the earliest settler-made pottery was produced there. Pottery was wagoned into the area, however, it is doubtful that the quantity needed could have come exclusively from North Carolina and Virginia.

East Tennessee’s earliest known potters were generally of German or English ancestry. However, after 1800 these two pottery traditions, combined with other cultural influences, resulted in distinctive regional pottery that can be identified today. This pottery, of which we are justifiably proud, provides a unique link in the continuum of the American potting tradition as it spread across the United States.

Unfortunately, knowledge of Tennessee’s early potters is limited by missing or destroyed records. Census information is largely unavailable, forcing students of pottery to look to other sources. Piecing together information from these sources is time consuming and sketchy at best, making it extremely difficult to formulate an accurate account of the region’s pottery industry.

Common sense tells us that there must have been a great many “family-type” potteries. The names of a few of these families are known. Some are represented in this exhibit: the Cains of Sullivan County, the Henshaws (Hinshaws, Hanchers) of Greene and Sullivan Counties, the Deckers of Washington County, Haun of Greene County and Wooten of Hawkins County.

Although most of our potters remain unnamed, their pots and sherds speak to us of their lives and times . . . they are messengers from the past.

The background images are stoneware sherds of pots made by Knox County potter, Samuel Smith, Jr. They are courtesy of Dr. Charles H. Faulkner, Professor, University of Tennessee, Department of Anthropology.

This essay was written to accompany the exhibition Great Road Style: Decorative Arts of Northeast Tennessee, 1780-1940. The exhibition was held at the William King Regional Arts Center, Abington Virginia September 17, 1999 through March 5, 2000. It was then published in September 2000 on www.cwahlerantiques.com.

October 11, 2012

The Decker Pottery

2009-10-01T00:00:00-04:00

The Decker home and pottery buildings c 1895. Burbage1.

The Decker Pottery

German spelling Deiker

Virginia spelling Dacker

Charles Frederick Decker was born in Germany in 1832. He arrived in Philadelphia in his late teens and oral tradition suggests he worked at the Remmey Pottery.

In 1857, at the age of 25 he established the Keystone Pottery in Philadelphia. (Eight years later he was an honorary pallbearer for Lincoln.) Decker and his first wife Catherine had two sons. Charles Frederick, Jr. was born in Philadelphia in 1856, according to Miller. William Decker was born in Delaware in 1859. William’s birth is the clue to an as yet unexplained stay in Delaware. Editors note: Decker’s time in Delware is now well documented. See reference on Delaware pottery in Background essay. Catherine died before the Civil War. Decker then married Sophia Hinch. Their sons were Fred Decker, again, born in Delaware and Richard Henry Decker, born in Pennsylvania.

After 1869 Decker moved to Virginia, six miles north of Abingdon. The pottery he operated there was located on land owned by a man named Mallicote (Mallicoat).

In 1872 he bought land in the Nolichucky River Valley near present day Johnson City, Tennessee. For a year or so he operated in both Virginia and Tennessee. He was one of a number of potters who settled in the region during the early years of Reconstruction.

Initially, he potted at what is known as the Saltz farm, presumably to make bricks for his permanent home to be built less that a mile away. In addition to the bricks, he made stoneware downspouts for his house and cobalt decorated tiles for a patio. One of these tiles may be seen in the Decker Collection at the Tennessee State Museum in Nashville.

Small decorated pitcher incised A Present and Made by C. F. Decker Nov 26th 1898. ai1.

Eventually, his main pottery was located just down the hill from his home and many of the buildings still stand today. Decker descendants continue to own the home and land where the pottery operated. He named his Chucky Valley pottery the same that he had used in Pennsylvania, Keystone Pottery. His pottery was marketed not only in East Tennessee, but also in North Carolina, Virginia and Kentucky. Locally, it was sold in a store owned by Decker and a man named Davis.

An 1873 Jonesborough newspaper contains an advertisement cited by Miller for Decker pottery. The ad claims “a superior article of Drain Pipe, which every farmer should use to drain their Swamp lands, as it will last almost forever.” The public was invited to examine the “fine specimens” of stoneware jars, jugs, and pitchers. The ware usually sold for ten cents per gallon.

The Manufacturers’ Census of 1880 indicates a well-run pottery employing six people. Skilled workmen were paid $2.00 a day, and unskilled 40 cents. He had a capital investment of $1600.00. It soon became more than a family pottery, operating approximately eight months of the year with as many as 25 employees at a time.

Five gallon tulip decorated churn. ai3.

Decker and his four sons, as well as Theodore B. Fleet*, James H. Davis and a man by the name of Orton produced the usual utilitarian objects, as well as the earlier mentioned drain pipe, yard ornaments, grave markers, banks, tobacco pipes and face jugs.

Cobalt decoration was brushed on in floral designs with dots and swags. Pin pricks, screw head impressions and some decorative stamps were also used. However, the larger share of surviving objects and sherds indicate the use of manganese slip which shows a yellow “flashing” probably due to the salting of the kiln. Rarely does one find signed pieces. When found, they generally are signed in script on or near the bottom; and they are signed Charles Sr. or Jr. or William. Charles Sr.’s more elaborate pieces are signed with impressed block letters and then brushed with cobalt.

Charles Decker, Sr. Germany 1832
Charles Decker, Jr. PA 1857
William Decker DE 1859
Fred Decker DE 1863
Richard Henry Decker PA 1866

The above birth dates and locations are found in Smith and Rogers.

A Present pitcher and jug with dot and line decoration. ai2.

After Decker Sr.’s second wife died in 1886 he married a widow in her fifties, Susan Elizabeth Broyles Gefellers. She died in 1909. The pottery remained in operation until around 1910. Pieces from this late date are frequently covered with a manganese slip. Charles Sr. died in 1914.

View of handle on small decorated jug. ai25.

Small tulip and dot decorated pitcher. ai5.

Another view of A Present pitcher. ai4.

A Present pitcher beside a large decorated pitcher. ai6.

One of Beverly Burbage’s favorite photographs showing Mrs. Judy Derby and Charles Sr.’s 30 gallon jar which is owned by the Carroll Reece Museum c 1970. Seen in the Tennessee Conservationist. Burbage3.

The now famous 1904 Decker Pottery photograph staged outside the pottery showing tools on the wall and finished pieces of pottery. Left to right: William Decker (Uncle Billy), William Duncan, Charles Decker, Jr., a grandson, Charles Sr. at the wheel and two more grandsons. The grandsons, sometimes referred to as apprentices, worked at carrying the pieces to drying racks and other chores. Seen in the Tennessee Conservationist and elsewhere. Burbage2.

*Theodore Fleet was born in Strasburg, Virginia in 1866. He worked for Sonner and Miller, Letcher Eberly and Decker for one year, 1889-1890. He then returned to Virginia and continued to work in potteries one way or another until 1928.

Miller, David K., The Pottery Patriarch, The Tennessee Conservationist, Vol. xxxvii , November 1971, No. 11, pp. 9-10. (David Miller was the great, great grandson of Charles F. Decker, Sr.)

Smith, S. D. and Rogers, S. T. A Survey of Historic Pottery Making in Tennessee, Nashville: Research Series, No. 3, Division of Archaeology, Tennessee Department of Conservation, 1979.

The text in this introduction originated from www.cwahlerantiques.com. Photographs have been added from the Burbage folders which are in the editor’s possession. Other readily available images of Decker pottery will be prefixed with an “ai”.

Southern Pottery

Messengers from the Past