Review by Kurt C. Russ
“A Great Deal of Stone & Earthen Ware”: The Rockingham County, Virginia School of Folk Pottery

Jeffrey S. Evans and Scott Hamilton Suter. “A Great Deal of Stone & Earthen Ware”: The Rockingham County, Virginia School of Folk Pottery, exh. cat. Shenandoah Valley Heritage Center, Dayton, Va., September 7–December 30, 2004. Dayton, Va.: Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society, 2004. 108 pp., 300+ illus. (most in color). $25.00 (softbound).

My wife, Linda, and I were present at the preview of “A Great Deal of Stone & Earthen Ware” from Rockingham County, Virginia, having lent nine pieces from our collection of Virginia stoneware for the sprawling three-room exhibition. (Most of the pieces were, like ours, from private collections and previously had not been on view to the public.) The resulting ambitious and well-conceived exhibition provided the most thorough and detailed documentation and assessment of the pottery industry in any one county or local area of the state.

Not only was a great deal of stone- and earthenware produced in Rockingham County during the nineteenth century, but much has survived into the twenty-first. One unique stoneware form is the squat pot/preserve jar, often decorated with brushed cobalt floral designs, occasionally with a content label, and sometimes with a date and name. Other characteristic stoneware forms include pitchers and high-collared ovoid storage jars. Brushed cobalt floral decoration and dates and stamped makers’ and capacity marks are observed on the stoneware, all of which is salt-glazed. 

Earthenware forms, such as open-mouthed storage jars, milk pans, coin banks, flowerpots, and drain tiles, are equally varied. The earthenware frequently is lead glazed or covered with clay slip, iron oxide wash, or splashed decoration. Although few examples are marked, the distinctive capacity stamps used by Emanuel Suter are not uncommon. Earthenware continued to be made in Rockingham well into the last half of the nineteenth century, when it had almost entirely been replaced by stoneware in most other areas of Virginia. 

Two of my favorite pieces from the exhibition are a two-gallon, high-collared, stoneware jar (p. 58, no. 72a) and a tall, graceful, lead-glazed earthenware teapot or coffee pot (p. 84, no. 153). The folksy brushed cobalt decoration on the jar depicts a disheveled, hatchet-wielding man in pursuit of a large turkey that appears to be a worthy adversary. John Heatwole’s decoration seems almost prescient given Rockingham County’s current status as “the turkey capital of Virginia.” Equally intriguing is the lead-glazed earthenware teapot attributed to John Suter. Its elongated ovoid body with splashed iron oxide, prominent rim, molded handle, and long molded spout highlighted with cobalt dots suggests a simple elegance reminiscent of earlier English forms. An advertised description of Heatwole’s pottery in 1868 seems to be equally relevant to this fine pot: “handsome” and appearing “as genteel as any Yankee ware we ever saw” (p. 13). From a jar that may have held turkey parts to a vessel for elegant dining, Rockingham County wares truly met a diverse range of consumer needs. 

Mirroring this diversity of wares is the large number of potters who worked in the county during most of the nineteenth century. Rockingham was one of the largest pottery centers in the Shenandoah Valley; some fifty-three potters worked in the industry at no fewer than twelve potteries, forming one cluster in the eastern part of the county and another along its western side. Most potters in both areas were either descendants of Andrew Coffman or had worked in one of the three CoVman potteries. The eastern group included Coffman, his sons, and neighbors in the Elkton area, as well as journeyman potters such as Ireland, Duey, and Shinnick in the Mount Crawford area. Western Rockingham potters clustered along the Dry River included John Heatwole (Coffman’s son-in-law), who was particularly productive and trained several potters, among them his cousin Emanuel Suter (co-curator Scott Suter’s great-great-grandfather). Suter developed an extensive operation and continued to produce wares into the twentieth century.^[1] 

Unlike Strasburg, which was a semi-industrialized factory town,^[2] Rockingham was more rural, with potters often producing wares during lulls in the agricultural cycle. The interconnectedness between these rural potters went beyond familial ties to include business, personal, and geographic associations, resulting in a strong sense of community.^[3] 

The exhibition organizers—a well-respected auctioneer and scholar of Virginia material culture (Evans) and a folklorist and descendant of one of the county’s premier potters (Suter)—collaborated with the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society and the Shenandoah Valley Heritage Center in assembling the display of more than 215 vessels. Jeff Evans and Richard Martin of the Heritage Center had been planning a show of local pottery, and Jeff’s associate Will McGuffin had expressed the importance of photographically documenting as many wares as possible. Suter dedicated his faculty research grant from Bridgewater College to documenting county wares. Historical society members pitched in to produce the exhibition and catalog. Undoubtedly this project’s success will serve as a model that encourages other local historical societies and museums to embark on research programs aimed at the documentation and exploration of local pottery sites, potters, and their products.

Presenting good-quality color photographs of these pieces with accompanying text in a well-conceived format, the catalog serves as an indispensable reference for Virginia pottery. The detailed captions highlight variations that are the basis for attributions as well as those that distinguish different potters, influences, or decorators. Associated photographs detailing important vessel attributes, such as capacity stamps, makers’ marks, handle types, and rim configurations, document variations among wares.

The introductory essay provides an overview of the goals of the exhibition. The concept of the area’s culture of clay seems appropriate to this material culture study exploring a folk pottery tradition related to the local community (p. 1). One of the goals was to place the wares of the county side by side and “see what was revealed” (p. 1). This descriptive approach assumes that the large assemblage of pottery will somehow collectively reveal its history of production, that “the tales spun by these seemingly mute objects” (p. 1) will inform us of a rich pottery tradition. The catalog appears to lack a definitive theoretical underpinning and seems to assume that the wares, even without the aid of a psychic, can communicate information and speak to us about the past.

The authors’ enthusiasm for comparing attributes of form, decoration, capacity stamps, and so forth helps to answer questions about attributions and areas of production as well as to formulate many new ones. The co-curators had the opportunity and the unique ability to pursue such questions because of their long-term familiarity with, and exposure to, vast numbers of wares and collectors throughout Rockingham. Their understanding of the region’s pottery and subsequent evaluation of this collection of extant wares has provided our most current understanding of the region’s industry, despite the absence of explicit research topics evaluated through a quantitative and qualitative assessment of vessel attributes or other data. 

The main section of the catalog opens with an essay describing Emanuel Suter’s trip to Philadelphia’s Centennial Exhibition in 1876 before reverting to a chronologically oriented consideration of the beginnings of the industry in Rockingham County with Coffman’s arrival in the 1820s (pp. 1–2). Although the reason for this organization is unclear, the chronological text flows well in its discussion of individual potters and their associations, production sites, the impact of the Civil War, and the establishment of Emanuel Suter’s New Erection Pottery, which offered, in addition to stoneware, a variety of new earthenware forms well into the 1890s. The discussion then makes an awkward transition to the Mount Crawford industry, focusing primarily on the Ireland, Duey, and Shinnick operation, about 1866–1881. Finally, the text concludes with a welcome discussion of the interconnectedness of potters and their families.^[4] 

Of the western Rockingham County pottery community the authors state that “although ostensibly in competition with each other, potters, bound by familial relationships and community ties, often worked for each other if needed” (p. 17). This spirit of cooperation is viewed as a defining example of a “folk craft, one that existed for generations amongst the same families, in the same communities, reflecting that region’s preferences in both usable ware and aesthetic appeal” (p. 27).^[5] A particularly helpful graphic illustration showing the interconnectedness of potters’ familial and business relationships (p. 26) presents a wealth of information to the reader but is not numbered, labeled as a figure, or, as a result, referenced in the text.^[6] Finally, factors affecting the industry’s demise in the face of increasing industrialization are discussed.

A concluding section or epilogue would have been helpful in suggesting recommendations for further work. The last paragraph of the introduction hints at this idea: “For every question that was answered, two or three others then presented themselves” (p. 1). Given the wealth of primary documentary evidence about the pottery industry in Rockingham County, a summary of promising research questions would have been useful to those pursuing similar research in different areas. Examples could range from an evaluation of the ledgers from Zigler’s Timberville Pottery that details types and varieties of wares produced, classification and labeling of different forms, and the areas to which wares were marketed and distributed to a consideration of the effects of industrialization on Rockingham’s industry and pottery communities and the ultimate disruption to the “culture of clay.”^[7]

An intimate familiarity with local wares and an understanding of the broader industry allowed the co-curators to make attributions and to identify outside influences accounting for certain vessel types and their decorative embellishments. An example is their identification of the sunflower decoration on a stamped Mount Crawford crock (p. 67, no. 101) as resembling decoration on Alexandria stoneware. They interpret this design as being introduced by Shinnick or perhaps Duey, both of whom worked previously in Alexandria or Baltimore.^[8] Another example is their perceptive association that both the batter jug form (p. 104, no. 208) and the bird motif on a local vessel (p. 49, no. 54) resemble Cowden and Wilcox Pottery production. These examples speak to a broad understanding of ceramics both within and beyond the region. By limiting their study to wares from the region where they had conducted hands-on research, the authors successfully avoided the pitfalls of inaccurate attributions, errors of interpretation, omissions, and inadequate references inherent in broader considerations. 

An 1866 notice appearing in the Old Commonwealth (Harrisonburg) proclaimed the merits of wares made from local clay by Messrs. Heatwole and Silber: “ROCKINGHAM STONEWARE—it is not perhaps well known as it ought to be, that we now have manufactured in Rockingham County some of the finest and best Stoneware made in the state” (p. 23). Perhaps as a result of this exhibition and catalog—given the valuable insights this carefully documented study provides about the region’s rich culture of clay and Virginia’s ceramics industry as a whole—Rockingham County wares will achieve the status the advertisers hoped for almost 140 years ago.

Kurt C. Russ
Fruit Hill Farm
Lexington, Virginia