My jugs are ugly because slavery was ugly. I first heard about face jugs when I was in my teens from my grandfather. He told me about my four-times Great Aunt, Evangeline, who was a slave potter in Jamaica who made face jugs. In African traditions, the jugs were used in spiritual practices, religious rituals, sometimes used to mark a grave. I connect with my ancestors when I make these jugs, not only to honor them but to honor their descendants, people like John Lewis, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and many others. I write messages on my jugs the way the enslaved potter David Drake wrote poetry on the large functional pots he made. He was an activist just by doing so, since it was illegal for him to read or write.
Over the years, I’ve sold hundreds of face jugs through shows and galleries, but more recently to collectors and museums. My jugs have appeared in Architectural Digest, Wallpaper Magazine, Smithsonian Folklife, even British Vogue, Elle Décor, and others. I’ve been in a few documentaries, a couple produced by PBS, and on the television show, “History Detectives. While this helps to spread the word about the jugs, my intent and message will never change. We must resist racism and hatred. The face jugs are my way of doing this. This is how I stand up for my people. Several decades after the Civil War, southern potters appropriated the face jug style for themselves, and it caught on. In the early 1980s, I made my first piece inspired by the artwork of my ancestors, essentially resurrecting the Black face jug. They lost the art form, and I’m taking it back, one jug at a time.
