Face Vessel
date: label: date made
content: 1967-1968
name: label: maker
content: Brown Pottery
notes: label: Description
content: The tradition of shaping human likenesses on ceramic vessels is thousands of years old. Face vessels held different meanings in different cultures around the world. Some were probably used in burial rituals, others satirized the person whose features were captured in clay, and still others were made just for fun.
label: Description
content: The earliest face vessels known to have been produced by white southern potters were probably not made until the end of the 1800s. White potters working in the Edgefield area in the mid-1800s may have seen the slave-made vessels and taken the idea with them as they moved out of South Carolina.
label: Description
content: Like many southern pottery families, the Brown family encompasses a line of potters generations long. The Browns began making pottery in west-central Georgia by the mid-1800s before migrating east to the Atlanta area after the Civil War. The family spread from there to North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.
label: Description
content: Starting in the 1960s, a growing interest in southern face vessels as examples of 20th-century folk art prompted collectors, historians, and cultural institutions to seek out and encourage the potters who produce them. This piece, in the middle, was made by a member of the Brown family in North Carolina, and donated to the Smithsonian by Ralph Rinzler and his wife. Working for the Smithsonian's Office of Folklife Programs, Rinzler was instrumental in the rediscovery and popularization of face vessels.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: North Carolina, Arden
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
label: See more items in
content: Face Vessels
label: See more items in
content: Cultures & Communities
label: See more items in
content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Ralph and Kathryn Rinzler
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1981.0287.5
label: accession number
content: 1981.0287
label: catalog number
content: 1981.0287.05
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Jug, Grotesque
label: Object Name
content: vessel, face
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: ceramic, earthenware, coarse (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: monochrome, brown (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 6 5/8 in x 5 3/4 in; 16.8275 cm x 14.605 cm