Heirloom, jug donated to museum

Wayne Ford's article in yesterday's "Living" section of the Athens Banner-Herald:

Cheever Meaders, who died in 1967, helped establish the Meaders name as folk potters in North Georgia. He is a distant kin of Dr. Roy Ward of Watkinsville, who owns a face jug made by Meaders that was handed down through his family.

The face jug recently was donated to the University of Georgia Museum of Art.

The following is an excerpt from an essay Ward wrote on the jug.

"When young Cheever Meaders in North Georgia gave his syrup jug joke to his young cousins, Clyde and Bonnie Meaders in Watkinsville, none of them expected it would ever become valued art in a prestigious museum. But the little jug that sat for over 50 years on a mantel piece and was laughed at, was the prototype for other face jugs, turned out by Cheever's descendants and, in time, most of the other folk potters in the area.

"This whimsical early jug is different from all the later ones. Cheever took his ordinary jug, still wet from the potter's wheel, and altered it. It is a true jug. The face part is secondary. For its eyes and teeth he broke up pieces of white quartz. He set pieces of molded clay for eyelids, nose and ears; the ears being identical to the shapes used for handles on churns.

"The other jugs made much later have been primarily faces, and only incidentally jugs. They are in a fashion to be collected, very different from Cheever's little private joke.

"This prototype jug was made in the 1920s and was never out of the family until it was donated to the Georgia Museum of Art."

In Charles Mack's book, "Talking with the Turners," Cheever Meader's son, Lanier, said his father probably made less than a dozen face jugs during his lifetime. Lanier Meaders made large quantities of the jugs.

Mr. Ford also ran a story on/review of Prof. Charles Mack's book Talking with the Turners: Conversations with Southern Folk Potters.