Galleries | Art, Museums | Sights “Face jug” is a term coined by
decorative arts historians to refer to an African American
pottery type created in the second half of the nineteenth
century, in the midst of slavery, in the Edgefield District of
South Carolina. The small vessel is turned stoneware with facial
features—wide eyes and bared teeth—made of kaolin, a locally
sourced clay. Historians originally believed that the face jug
was utilitarian and used to store water. Multiple theories later
surfaced involving its function as a container of magical
materials and its ritualistic use. New research has shown that
the vessel was likely multipurpose—and a coded object meant to
be misunderstood. White potters appropriated the face jug design
around 1880. They mainly discontinued the use of kaolin, a
sacred material in West Africa, and produced the objects mostly
as whimsies. The face jug thus lost the symbolic power of its
original form. This exhibition organized by Claudia Mooney,
assistant curator of the Chipst