Hillside & Smithfield: A Tale of Two Potteries
(February 10 – June 15, 2024)
A truck appears ready to load up at Smithfield Art Pottery, where multiple deliveries each week were made by road and rail. The seated man and woman hold clipboards or notebooks and may be accounting for their purchase before the nine men behind them, including Herman Cole, load it up. (Courtesy of Johnston County Heritage Center)
This exhibition shows examples made during the Hillside Pottery period alongside those from Smithfield Art Pottery for the first time.
HILLSIDE POTTERY
Supported by Anna Graham of New York and Pinebluff, N.C., Herman Cole opened Hillside Pottery in 1927 in Smithfield, N.C. Cole, the son of potter J.B. Cole, produced the pottery; Graham, a trained artist, sketched artware shapes to be duplicated. Sales were made at the shop’s roadside stand and numerous northern outlets identified by Graham. Hillside Pottery became Smithfield Art Pottery in about 1930.
SMITHFIELD ART POTTERY
With talented turners like Jonah Owen, Charlie Craven, Charlie Teague, Guy Daugherty, Bill Gordy, and others, Herman Cole turned fledgling Hillside Pottery into Smithfield Art Pottery, a pottery-making behemoth with thousands of finished wares shipped out weekly. For over a decade, in the wake of the Great Depression, superbly turned shapes and superior glazes ensured strong sales and acclaim for the pottery’s products.
Exhibition guest-curated by Stephen C. Compton.
