How making face jugs connects Jim McDowell to the stories of his enslaved ancestors

In 1858, a ship called the Wanderer carried 400 Bakongo people [a Bantu ethnic group from central and western Africa] to Edgefield County in North Carolina, where I live today. Those that survived the journey were enslaved to work in potteries here. The slave-owners didn’t break up the groups, so their customs stayed pretty intact.

When I was 13, my grandfather, who was a tombstone maker, told me about the religious practices of our African ancestors. He spoke to me about Edgefield face jugs: how they were made as grave markers because slaves were not allowed to have gravestones, or were put by doors for protection. I forgot about this until I was in college, and met a ceramicist who was making face jugs with white features, like English Toby jugs.

I decided to make my own but with black features: big eyes, big lips. I make mine look scary, because part of the purpose of an Edgefield face jug is to scare the devil away from graves, so the soul can go to heaven. But every now and then one smiles – I can’t help it.

They represent an amalgamation of three religions: ancestor worship from Africa, voodoo from Jamaica and the islands, and Christianity in the US. Enslaved people stopped making them in the early 20th century, and white potters started creating novelty versions for tourists instead. The tradition got dropped for a while, but I’m taking the art form back.

I get my ideas from my ancestors and from reading – and as they coalesce, I make the jugs. I find particular inspiration in history: in stories of the women who knew they were going to be taken into slavery and braided rice seeds into their hair so that they, and the food culture of their homeland, could survive; in the scarification of African bodies as a right of passage; in the suffering of White people who stood up for Black people in the church; in Ruth Bader Ginsberg!

I’m also inspired by Dave Drake, a slave potter who worked at Edgefield. It was a crime to teach an enslaved person how to read and write at that time and his literacy was illegal, yet he inscribed his name on his huge stoneware pots.

Making face jugs keeps me connected to these stories, and to my ancestors. I make my own face jugs to honour my people, to keep this tradition alive and to unite people through our shared history. A lot of children, both Black and White, don’t know this history: that a Black man invented the three-signal traffic light, the blood bank, the cotton gin. My ancestors wanted us to remember how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go. That’s why I keep doing it.

This is an extended version of an article that first appeared in the May/June 2021 issue of Crafts magazine (#288). You can explore our entire archive by becoming a Crafts member