What is catawba pottery?

 Catawba pottery has been the life blood of the Catawba Nation for many years, and it helped sustain our tribe during difficult times in our history. When settlers came into our area in the Carolinas, Catawbas sold their pottery as part of the trade routes that developed. During the Great Depression, Catawba women made and sold pottery to help our people survive. In modern times, Catawba pottery has become a well-regarded form of Native American art. Pieces of Catawba pottery have been featured in art museums in South Carolina, across the United States in the Smithsonian and other prestigious museums, and in the Louvre in Paris as well as other European museums. 

The Catawba people have made our traditional pottery for at least the past 4000 years and some historians date it back to 6000 years. There has not been one generation that stopped making pottery. Simply put, Catawba pottery reaches to the very heart of who we are as Catawba people. The loss of our language and significant portions of our culture has been devastating to the tribe, but the loss of our pottery tradition would be even more devastating since it is one of the few traditions we have today.

Catawba artists follow the same methods to make pottery today that our ancestors followed. In an article about Georgia Harris, whom our foundation honors, she discusses our traditional methods. She shares that she gathered her clay along the riverbanks in the area near Rock Hill, South Carolina, where she lived for most of her life. To create a piece of pottery, she often started by taking a big ball of clay, patting it down, rolling it out into long strands, and then making coils to build the structure. "You have to get it wet enough," she said, "'cause if they crack, that's usually trouble." After completing a piece, she let it dry, and then wet it again so that she was able to scrape the surface and polish it with smooth rocks to create a traditional, velvetlike finish. Sometimes, she carved designs in the surface or added elaborate handles in the shape of turtles or other animal forms. "A long time ago, they used to paint the surfaces," Harris said, "but they never put glaze on them."

The firing process involved burying the pot and heating it in an open pit, adding multicolored burnt shades of black and deep orange. "I might use some soft woods to start it off with, but when you want to burn them real good, hard wood is better. I've always found that it's better. It holds heat longer. Makes it burn faster."

Catawba pottery is our connection to who we are as people. But with the distractions of technology, it seems harder and harder to engage youth in our traditional arts. When we do take the time to learn and connect, there is a pull within Catawba people towards putting our hands in clay and making pottery. Connection is the only plausible explanation for why a single generation of Catawba people have never stopped making pottery. 

Portions of this article were found on the NEA website: https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage/georgia-harris