Beschreibung:

Stoneware Face Jug, attributed to Bath, (Aiken County), South Carolina, area, second half 19th century, alkaline glazed jug with modeled features, with applied white kaolin eyes pierced at the center, and teeth, ht. 4 1/2 in. Provenance: Family descent of a Connecticut antiquarian who collected antiques in the late 19th/early 20th century. The base of the vessel is inscribed "Aiken S.C." and with his inventory number "468." A late19th/early 20th century note inscribed by him and retrieved from the interior of the vessel is inscribed "Monkey Jug= made at Bath S.C. 1862 by negro slaves/Aiken S.C." Literature: The topic of slave-made face jugs is discussed in two articles in Ceramics in America, Chipstone Foundation, 2006. In the article titled "Fluid Vessel: Journey of the Jug," by John A. Burrison, pp. 93-121, the history of pottery jug-making in America and the early Southern face vessels made by enslaved African-American potters, in particular the jugs made at Colonel Thomas Davies Palmetto Fire Brick Works at Bath in west-central South Carolina. Burrison states the jugs are "Distinguished by bulging eyes and bared teeth of kaolin inset into the stoneware clay body..." and proposes the probable influence of anthropomorphic clay vessels made in West Africa (the chief source of the Atlantic slave trade) had on the Afro-Carolinian slaves. In a related article titled "Making Faces: Archaeological Evidence of African-American Face Jug Production," by Mark M. Newell with Peter Lenzo, pp. 122-138, the origins and use of pottery face vessels are discussed. In particular the authors are concerned with the vessels made by African slave potters in the area around Bath, South Carolina, and nearby Georgia potteries in the early 1860s to 1870s, as well as examples of face vessel pottery shards dug from the former Miles Mill, at Edgefield, South Carolina, all which show several characteristics similar to the jug offered here. Interestingly, the article states that the larger face jugs were used "as water vessels called 'monkey' jugs-after monkeyed, a southern term for the dehydrating effect of the summer heat." Small jugs such as the one offered here aroused curiosity as to their use, as they were so small that they would not hold much liquid to quench a thirsty individual. It also mentions the 1909 interview by early American historian Edwin AtLee Barber with a South Carolina plantation pottery owner, Colonel Davies, who commented that the small jugs were used by the slaves "for their own purposes," inferring a connection between the jugs and possible religious or ritual practices.