Art Institute of Chicago

Face Jug

Artist unknown (American, 19th century)

Date

c. 1860

Medium

Stoneware and alkaline glaze

Culture

Edgefield county

Department

Arts of the Americas

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

This vessel is similar to the earliest known face jugs made in South Carolina and Georgia in the second half of the 1800s. Beginning in 1858 a number of enslaved people from the Kongo region of central Africa were trained as potters in the Edgefield District of South Carolina. They produced utilitarian wares as well as their own pottery. Jugs such as this one are thought to have been used for ritual or religious purposes as they are too small to hold enough water for a field hand. A number of such jugs have been found along routes of the Underground Railroad, suggesting they were valuable enough to be carried as their owners attempted to escape slavery.

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