A kiln of one's own

A former coal miner, Jim McDowell has defied the odds to set up his workshop and keep a historic form of American pottery alive

- ARUNA D’SOUZA

Jim McDowell, who calls himself ‘the Black Potter’, has spent much of his 35-year-long career making face jugs, a form introduced by enslaved people of African origin in the US in the 19th century. But it took him until almost two years ago, aged 76, to finally get a gas- and wood-fired kiln of his own, despite a lifetime of pursuing what seems not to have been just a passion for pottery, but a calling.

Talking from his studio in Weaverville, North Carolina, McDowell says his family knew he was destined to work with clay from the time he was a toddler playing in a sandbox, and dates his awakening to attending a family funeral at the age of 13. ‘My grandfather told us that we had an ancestor named Evangeline who was a slave potter in Jamaica, and that she made face jugs. It struck a chord with me.’