*Finally* got to Peter’s Pottery in Mound Bayou! First of all, here’s what I got:
This pair of very simple, short candlesticks – I really like the glaze on these.
This rabbit pinch-pot. I just really like everything about it – the bunny, the shape, etc. It’s a happy little piece.
Peter’s Pottery is in Mound Bayou, MS. It was started by the Woods brothers, who originally apprenticed under the McCartys in Merigold.
I thought much of their inventory was very similar to McCarty Pottery (which is just down the road in Merigold). The brothers use Mound Bayou clay to make their pots and have a signature glaze.
Mound Bayou is a very interesting place. It was founded in 1887 by Isaiah T. Montgomery and his cousin Benjamin T. Green. Isaiah Montgomery was a former slave of Joseph Emory Davis, Jeff Davis’ brother, and his father was Joseph Davis’ assistant and plantation business manager, helping work on the new model of day-to-day operations at Hurricane Plantation. The reforms included a slave hospital, slave court (w/ slave jury), etc.
Isaiah moved from Hurricane Plantation to another formerly Davis-owned plantation Brierfield (they were incredibly successful there after the war), to Vicksburg, when he and his cousin picked out some land in Bolivar County in 1887 that was owned by a railroad. He wrote to Jeff Davis asking that he request the railroad sell them 840 acres. Not only did that happen, but by 1902, the Mound Bayou Corporation had 20,000 acres in its name.
Mound Bayou was founded as a cooperative community of freed slaves – it was Isaiah Montgomery’s dream to found the “largest Negro U.S. town” (the 2000 census put the percentage of Blacks living there at 98.43%). The history there is really *so* interesting.
The two pictures below are of Isaiah T. Washington’s home, which is supposed to be under renovation:
This is a pic I took of the Mound Bayou water tower – I like the town’s symbol.
