Carrying on a 150-Year-Old Pottery Tradition

Catawba Valley swirlware vase

QUESTION: Last Fall, I discovered several pieces of pottery with a swirl design at a local antiques show. The dealer called it Catawba Pottery but couldn’t tell me much more than it had been made somewhere in Appalachia. What can you tell me about this pottery? And where did it originate?

ANSWER: Catawba Valley Pottery describes an alkaline glazed stoneware made in the Catawba River Valley of Western North Carolina from the early 19th century to the present day.

Early Catawba pottery jar

Before modern conveniences such as electricity, plastic and refrigeration, pottery jugs. jars and crocks stored a family's perishables. A springhouse or pantry were the equivalent of the Frigidaire. Local potters were essential. When refrigeration and inexpensive glass came to the South between 1900 and 1930, the use of pottery to store food declined. However, a few potters in North Carolina's Catawba and Lincoln counties began making pottery for tourists attracted to the small stoneware pots with their distinctive alkaline glaze. The smarter potters kept their traditional pottery-making ways and shapes, but added customer-friendly swirl pitchers, miniatures, exotic vases, umbrella stands and, in a burst of creative marketing, face jugs.

Beginning with river-dug clay, potters turned milled clay on a foot-powered wheel, glazed the green-ware with a slurry of wood ashes, powdered glass, clay and water, and then fired it in a pine fueled ground hog kiln nestled against a hillside. This has been an unbroken 150-year-old tradition.



Stoneware, hard but not as brittle as earthenware, is durable, vitreous, easy to clean and non-toxic. Its strength made it ideal for the 5- to 20-gallon food storage jars needed by 19th-century farmers.

Catawba Valley potters used alkaline glazes on their wares

Catawba Valley potters used alkaline glazes in shades of brown or green instead of the commonly used salt glaze. Potters from Edgefield, South Carolina, originally brought alkaline glazes to the Catawba Valley. These potters made alkaline glazes by combining hardwood ash or crushed glass with clay and water. Catawba potters had an abundance of wood ash from burning their kilns but didn’t have plentiful salt deposits in their region.

The Catawba potters initially fired their alkaline glazed wares in what were known as "groundhog kilns." These kilns were a unique southern U.S. variation of climbing kilns built into hillsides. Semi-subterranean in construction, the groundhog kiln featured a door leading into a long, low passage of brick or rock construction, with a stack or chimney poking out of the ground up hill. Potters loaded pieces in the low passageway or "ware-bed" and built a fire in a sunken firebox, located just inside the door. The design allowed the stack to draw heated air, flames and ash through the pottery grouped inside and created the draft needed to generate the intense heat required to create stoneware. This type of firing or "burning " worked particularly well with large pieces of pottery. Contemporary Catawba Valley potters still use variations of these kilns, usually referred to as "tunnel kilns."

Pre-Civil War bulbous jug

Before the Civil War, jars from the area were bulbous with a flared top, gradual widening body, fat waist, and narrow base. After the war, jars maintained the same overall shape, but got bigger and fatter. By the 1930s, influenced by Ohio pottery jars, they became straight-walled, open top cylinders.

Jugs held all kinds of liquids from water to whiskey. During the 1920s and 1930s, Catawba potters added faces to these jugs, easily identified by their strap handle, pulled in shoulder and narrow spout. Catawba Valley potter Harvey Reinhardt was one of the first to produce this grotesque, but extremely popular form. However, potters made few face jugs until Burlon Craig, who produced thousands between the late 1940s and the present day.

Early Catawba Valley potters also made swirlware. Made by layering light and dark clays, they created a swirl pattern by moving diagonally up and around the body of a jug, jar, pitcher, birdhouse, vase, or dozens of other forms.

Burlon Craig face jug

Among the 150 to 200 potters scattered throughout the area between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a dozen individuals and two families stand out. Neighbors Daniel Seagle and Sylvanus Hartsoe were two of the most prolific potters with signed pieces surfacing at area auctions and antique shops. The meticulous work of Samuel Propst, called 'the best turner of all" by Burlon Craig, is less frequently seen. Enoch and Harvey Reinhardt were business partners between 1932 and 1936. Many of their larger pieces, produced by Enoch, and small tourist items, Harvey's specialty, have the stamp "Reinhardt Bros,/Vale, N.C." The Propsts and Reinhardts began making blurred, mottled edged swirlware in about 1930.

Two area families also produced several generations of potters. The Ritchie family, the largest, began making pottery with Moses and ended their work, 12 potters later, at the death of Luther in 1940. Producing 10 noted potters, the Hilton family established a half dozen potteries in and around the valley. By the 1920s, they dallied in decorated dinnerware and figurines for the tourist trade which locals called "fancyware." The Hilton family pottery-making business ended in 1939 or 1940. Crisscrossing nearly all of the prominent families as an apprentice, neighbor or co-worker, is Burlon Craig. It was he who kept traditional 19th-century pottery-making alive and continuous.

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Is a Man Without a Mustache Truly a Man

QUESTION: I’ve seen several mustache cups at recent antiques shows. I’d like to start collecting them, but the ones I saw were a little pricey. Before I invest in any, I’d like to know more about them. Can you help me?

ANSWER: That’s only understandable. Too many people start collections on impulse and then things get out of hand. Before they know it, they’ve spent way more money than they had expected.

Mustache cups, which featured a raised guard attached to a cup’s rim to prevent the mustache from touching the liquid, resulted from a need of mustache wearers to protect their mustaches. During Victorian times, mustaches became a form of male pride, with some men going to extreme lengths to grow a perfect one. Some curled, waxed, and touched up their mustaches with dye while others used rollers and nets to hold the curl at night. To maintain and shape these manly growths, men had to use a special wax.

The wax created a problem for men wearing mustaches because any cup of hot tea or coffee melted the wax and dripped it right into the cup and leaving the mustache a drooping mess, and the drink far from tasty. The solution was the invention of the mustache cup by Harvey Adams in 1830 at a pottery in Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, England.

Victorians began referring to mustaches as "Napoleons," named after the French soldiers who wore small beards and mustaches called "Napoleons" after the Franco-Prussian War. Among the aristocracy, each gentleman had his own china maker, whose identity was carefully shielded. The guard across the top was designed from a mold in the exact shape and size of the nobleman's mustache.

During the early years, manufacturers sold mustache cups and matching saucers as individual items, but as the 19th century progressed, makers included them in complete sets of porcelain dinnerware, such as Haviland. Those belonging to the sets were usually small and dainty while those for everyday use were large and heavy. Men used them to drink coffee, tea, and even hot chocolate.

Mustache cups became popular in the U.S. during the mid 19th century. German potters produced vast quantities of mustache cups for export to the U.S. By the 1880s and well into the 1890s, potteries all over the world had begun producing elaborately decorated sets.

Potters used their imagination to create unique and fascinating mustache cups and saucers from earthenware; porcelain, and stoneware in many shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny demitasse cups to large farmer's cups holding up to a quart of liquid. Tinsmiths and silversmiths also made them.

Early cups were bowl-shaped, cylindrical, six or eight-sided, ribbed, melon-shaped and kettle-shaped. Handles came in many different forms, ranging from snakes, insects, birds, twisted ropes, fans, and cherubs. The saucers matched or harmonized with the cups in both shape and decoration. Early saucers were deep, while later examples became shallower, like regular saucers.

German manufacturers used luster grounds, which were Victorian favorites, on their mustache cups. Pink luster was the most popular. Other ground colors frequently used included pale green, yellow, sky blue, lavender, coral, cobalt and gold. In addition, German potters encrusted their cups with ornate forms of applied decoration.

Mustache cups can be found decorated with landscapes, hunting scenes, animals and birds, flowers and interesting geometric designs. Portrait mustache cups are rare and therefore highly sought after by collectors.

During in the late 19th century, mottoes or expressions on mustache cups, written in enamel, gold, or molded in relief, became a fad. Some examples include “Remember Me,” “Love the Giver,” “Forget Me Not,” “A Present,” and “Birthday Greetings.” Others had the words “Father” or “Papa” written on them.Victorians loved to travel, so the mustache cup came a favorite  souvenir. Cups, often with a pink luster ground, could be found in shops near tourist spots. Manufacturers also made mustache cups to commemorate historical events and royal coronations.

Potteries in Staffordshire, England, decorated some of these souvenir mustache cups  with transfer printed designs, but today, these are scarce and command high prices. Matched cups and saucers made by Limoges, Rosenthal, Royal Worcester and Royal Bayreuth are also becoming hard to find. Silver-plated mustache cups and saucers in good condition are also rare. Prices for these rarer cups can reach as high as $400 to $500.