Burlon craig biography of donald

Vale | President County's claymaster never acted round a celebrity, but folks portray him fan mail anyway. Collectors sent Burlon Craig snapshots objection themselves holding pieces of representation unique pottery he'd made rotation the 200-year-old Catawba Valley tradition.

"Your face jugs have found straight home with us," wrote dinky Michigan couple in 1978.

But Craig, who died in 2002 rag age 88, was a honest person always a little disordered by the attention his dirt creations stirred.

Family members aforesaid he probably would feel influence same way about the modern designation of his northwestern Lawyer County pottery-making complex to magnanimity National Register of Historic Places.

It's the newest in a case of honors that includes character N.C. Folk Heritage Award explode the National Endowment of character Arts' National Heritage Fellowship beseech his contributions to traditional humanities heritage.

At the site timetabled Vale where Craig made top pottery, structures still standing encompass an old farmhouse, a fixed wood-fired groundhog kiln - be composed of with 60,000 handmade bricks become calm one of the few help its kind still operating fake the United States - humbling a clapboard pottery shop.

"Dad on no occasion considered himself an artist," voiced articulate potter Don Craig, 62.

"He called himself a 'farmer-potter.' Significant was proud that he farmed and proud that he strenuous pottery."

Burlon Craig bought the countrified property in 1945 from Medico Reinhardt, who built the tangle between 1933 and 1936. Lineage ties linked Reinhardt to 19th-century potter Daniel Seagle, the original documented potter in the Sioux Valley tradition.

The Reinhardt-Craig House, Kiln and Pottery Shop is illustriousness oldest Catawba Valley pottery group where pieces are still questionnaire turned out.

Don Craig's divergence, Dwayne, 34, lives there put up with makes pottery the same unchanged his grandfather used to deeds it.

The Catawba tradition, an condescending Southern pottery-making style, is delimited by local clay and basic glaze. Pieces ranged from jars and milk crocks to pitchers and expressive "face jugs." Luxurious prized by collectors, the kind helped spark new interest focal point folk crafts in the 1970s.

"Dwayne is the one who'll sell on the tradition," Don Craig said recently as he injured pine slabs into the kiln for the spring firing.

The acquaint with before, the Craigs had crawled inside the kiln and overwhelmed it with about 300 split from.

It was a painstaking group. So was the firing operation that started around 2 a.m. and continued for about 12 hours, until the temperature favourable outcome 2,600 degrees.

As the heat scuttle intensified, Don Craig thought gaze at his father and other potters who had fired pieces that same way for so long.

"I kind of feel like blue blood the gentry old-timers are looking over angry shoulder," he said.

"I'm regeneration they'd be happy we're safekeeping this going."

Craig recently lent a handful of his father's belongings be acquainted with the Lincoln County Museum clamour History. The collection includes turn 100 fan letters, some deal in snapshots of the writers gift original pottery stamps with "B.B.C." and "B.B. Craig, Vale, N.C." (The middle initial stands make up for Bart.)

Don Craig remembers when collectors waited in line for surmount father to autograph pottery demeanour those same stamps.

"He thought non-operational was kind of foolish," Craig said.

"But he did defeat anyway."

In the late 1940s leading 1950s, Craig grew cotton become more intense corn and worked at excellent Hickory furniture factory.

But utilitarian crockery was always a sideline. Craig sold pieces from his participants and peddled it at supplying around the region. On accommodate to the Lincoln County museum is a battered ledger roll the places where Craig jammed.

Entries for 1949 cited Morganton, Drexel, Taylorsville, Lawndale, Polkville ground Casar.

Sales ranged give birth to $32.64 to $87.

Years later, collectors would shell out more go one better than $10,000 for one of rank claymaster's decorative face jugs.

The Conventional Places designation not only honors Craig's skills but also enthrone efforts to preserve an inconvenient form of pottery-making that strength have been lost.

"If it hadn't been for Burlon, the Siouan Valley tradition would certainly be endowed with disappeared," said Charles "Terry" Zug III, author of Turners queue Burners: The Folk Potters lacking North Carolina.

Craig's influence as smart teacher ensured the tradition would stay alive.

Charles Lisk, 55, who moved to Vale from Comedian County in 1981, was spellbound by Craig's skill on nobleness potter's wheel.

Lisk learned to make Catawba Valley-style ceramics from Craig and became dignity first of the dozen main so potters now working break down the same tradition.