Talking with the Turners
Charles R. Mack
Review by Robert C. Lock

On a summer sabbatical in 1981, researcher and historian Charles Mack set out across the middle South to interview, photograph, and record working potters. Largely avoiding North Carolina's mainstay potter communities in Seagrove and Sanford (mostly due to the extensive work already done there by others,
he mentions), he concentrated his time and taping in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, a bit of Kentucky, and Catawba Valley, North Carolina. His ultimate collection—including pots, photographs, and interviews—is now in the archives of the University of South Carolina's McKissick Museum.

Talking with the Turners: Conversations
with Southern Folk Potters
Charles R. Mack
The University of
South Carolina Press
272 pages, 26 color
plates; 61 B&W photos
cloth $45;
audio CD included.
ISBN: 1570036004

This book excerpts the tale of those travels and more than twenty hours of interviews. Mack first provides a succinct introduction to Southern pottery, spanning the
history of its utilitarian ware, primary family potteries and communities in each state he visits, and a snapshot overview of traditional and transitional pottery as it was in 1981. With extensive photographs of pots and potters as well as short biographies of each potter interviewed, Talking with the Turners provides useful insight and warm personal glimpses into the everyday toil and craftsmanship of these potter families.

When I researched and wrote the Traditional Potters of Seagrove, NC in the early 1990s, one of the more powerful aspects of that process was the hours of
conversation with potters and family members no one had ever interviewed. Likewise, turning those interviews and anecdotes into the printed word became a large
part of that book's critical success.

Over the years, I've found myself wishing I had more recordings from those largely transcribed interviews. Charles Mack, however, has carefully and thoughtfully captured—through strength of observation and personal anecdotal history—excerpts that will be greatly enjoyed by every student and collector of Southern pottery. Best of all, his interviews are encapsulated onto an audio CD that accompanies the book so you can go beyond the printed word and listen to interviews with, and nuances of, some of the South's best known potters, many unfortunately now deceased, some 25 years ago.

This book is Southern potter oral history at its best:

It is only in the South that the folk pottery heritage of this
country has been able to maintain an interrupted presence. The
potters with whom I spoke in the summer of 1981 played a
crucial role in keeping their traditional American Art form alive.
Sadly many of them are gone now, but their recorded voices
allow us to continue talking with the turners....

With these words, Mack opens the recorded CD accompanying Talking with the Turners. While to many of us, 1981 might not seem so long ago, Mack points out 1981 was a time in which "the survival of the potter's craft was very much in question throughout much of the region."

A lot has happened since, certainly, and he provides an epilogue that gives a current summary of the status of the potters and potteries. The project is well served by the inclusive nature of its interviews, and you'll find comments and anecdotes from many potters of interest, some well known, some less so. At $45, this hardback title with audio CD is pricey, but worthwhile if you have any interest in the history of Southern pottery and the potters behind the wares.

William J. (Bill) Gordy (Talking with the Turners, pgs. 100 and124)
Bill Gordy (1910-1993) was a well-known Georgia potter who became a
journeyman turner at a number of Seagrove/Sanford-area North
Carolina potteries before returning to Georgia in 1935 to set up his own
shop. Charles Mack suggests Gordy was thus the first of the Georgia
potters to transition from traditional utilitarian ware to the newer art forms.
Gordy: ...firing wood kilns used to be sort of a community thing.
Communities do that here. I've had neighbors stay up all night.
Mack: I've heard North Carolina people used to bring chickens and
so forth and roast them in the kiln.
Gordy: When we'd open the kiln, you know, my daddy'd throw one
of those big doors back when it was about 450 degrees, and my
mother would have a big pan of homemade biscuits, and he'd
stick them in there right quick, and in just a few minutes they'd
brown all over and, boy, were they good. That was old-fashioned,
Italian, oven-baked biscuits.
Mack: So this was sort of, when the word went out that there was a
firing going on at the Gordys, a whole crowd of people from the
community would come around?
Gordy: Yeah, and I had `em here....Sometime I had so many, to tell
you the truth, that they'd get a little in the way....

Gordy: When we worked at Smithfield [North Carolina]--that was in
bad Depression years, you know--we got real good pay, along about
$55 a week. And I can remember we would be walking down the
street, us potters would, you know, and Smithfield is a little town
about four or five thousand, and [people would whisper], "There goes
one of those big money makers." I wouldn't even turn around.

Winter 2006 · Volume 2, Number 1 southernarts JOURNAL pp186-189