It’s easy to miss the Seagrove community, hidden deep in the rural heart of North Carolina, where earthenware pottery traditions have thrived for centuries. Long before the arrival of Scots-Irish settlers, indigenous people made use of the area’s rich, gray clays to craft sturdy and finely detailed coiled pots. These same clays have attracted a plethora of potters over the years since, from around the United States and the world, each with a unique style and inspiration.
Over the last winter, unable to visit Seagrove in person due to the pandemic, I set out to write a piece centered around how the pottery community had been affected by Covid-19. I’d made many happy visits to Seagrove as a girl. Our shelves still shelter a blue-glaze pie plate from one of those trips, along with other pieces in more traditional salt glaze. Now my hope was to draw increased attention to the potteries that remained open and encourage the Triangle community to rally around other Seagrove potters by supporting their shops online. Over several weeks, I conducted interviews via email with Seagrove potters. As I was putting the final touches to the article, however, its purpose was overtaken by what seemed to be the beginning of the end to the virus. My draft coincided with the first public vaccine administrations. A few weeks later, mask mandates began to be lifted, which led me to believe that I had missed my opportunity to bring attention to an artists’ community at a time when small businesses were struggling. I set the article aside.
Along came the delta variant. When the CDC reverted to their former mask recommendations, I resolved to finish the article. Seagrove is such an important part of North Carolina’s art and history that it would be a disservice not to explore how its potters are being affected by the pandemic.
When I was six, maybe seven, I remember hearing gravel crunch under the tires of my mom’s rust-pitted Toyota Corolla as we turned into a long driveway branching off from the main forest-lined highway. We pulled up to a cottage that reminded me of my Goldilocks picture book. I pushed strongly on my buckle and stumbled out onto the rocky terrain. Despite the forest overstory, the sun managed to pierce through the leaves in a way that made me form a visor over my head with my hands. Once I’d regained my land legs after the long drive, I caught up to my parents who were entering a garage on the right, a large, open building separate from the house but maintaining the same staggered shake style.
Log shelves filled the garage and lined the walls, each laden with a different kind of dish: stew pots, dinner plates, vases, jugs, and cups. I wandered around in wonder, head-high to the lowest shelves, and I noticed that while a lot of dishes were included in sets, many had completely unique colors and designs. My mom drew me aside and told me to consider carefully, because we would be taking a pot home with us that day. I began to look more deeply than before, searching for a design that would be unique to my family. At last, my eyes caught the shimmery blue glaze of a pan by the back window. The window was slightly clouded with leading, but this didn’t prevent the sun from catching the cobalt and shining in all the right ways.
The first potters I interviewed were Anne Pärtna and her husband, Adam Landman, of Blue Hen Pottery. These Seagrove craftspeople devote their time to the creation of whimsical, farmhouse-themed mugs and fun, bee-decorated plates. ‘Most of the inspiration for my drawings on pots comes from my life,” Pärtna told me. “Beekeeping, chickens, and gardening.’ She also noted that Scandinavian design and mid-century modern furniture greatly influence her work, as does the craft of other potters.
As a rising senior in high school, I had been thinking a lot about my own future. I wondered whether Pärtna had always been interested in pottery, and if so, how that interest had impacted the future she saw for herself. Pärtna explained that she had been interested in pottery “probably all [her] life,” but she started seriously focusing on clay in high school. “I decided to go study ceramics after high school and have not looked back.”
Pärtna is originally from Estonia, where she grew up on a farm overlooking the Gulf of Finland. In response to my question about what had sparked her interest in Seagrove and inspired her to settle there, Pärtna told me that she and Landman arrived through a North Carolina nonprofit organization called STARworks, where they interned at the clay factory after graduating from ECU. According to its website, STARworks “promotes community and economic development by providing outstanding artistic educational programs and business ventures.”
Down the road from Pärtna and Landman’s Blue Hen, Frank Neef’s studio can be found. There Neef creates classical porcelain pottery featuring intricate, precise detail. “My forms harken back to classic Chinese and Korean porcelains of the 1400s to 1700s,” Neef told me, as well as to the “art pottery in the US of the early 1900s.” After several years of making pots in a college setting following graduation, Neef had the opportunity to become a “clay entertainer” at a theme park called Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. “I have not had a real job since,” he told me.
Neef explained that before moving to Seagrove, the bulk of his work was sold in art fairs around the country. His wife hated the fairs and expressed she didn’t want to be doing them when they were in their 60s and 70s. A friend suggested they look into some properties in the area. Mr. and Mrs. Neef moved to Seagrove in January of 2010.
When I asked how coronavirus had affected their practices, Pärtna told me their shop had been closed for the spring of 2020, and for most of the summer they were open by appointment only. “We kept making work,” she told me, “but in a lesser volume.” While they did not get to participate in out-of-town shows, Landman’s and her studio practice remained mostly the same.
Neef’s experiences have been similar: “It hasn’t affected making pots at all. But it has affected sales.” Other Seagrove potters closed during the initial lockdown phase before opening by appointment only. Some, including Pärtna and Landman, have now returned to regular pre-Covid hours.
I was also curious about how tourism had been affected by Covid. Pärtna indicated that tourism had been in decline even before Covid hit; the pandemic merely aggravated the drop in numbers. Neef was more optimistic. He explained that people were still visiting, “looking for someplace to get out to. Seagrove is a relatively safe place, with few crowds, mask wearing […], so people still come here.”
When I asked how the pandemic had affected sales and the structure of their business, Pärtna told me that although total sales had been down, sales through their ETSY shop had really picked up. Neef has an online component to his shop, and he also continued to focus on walk-in traffic. “While the number of guests are down, there is still enough business to survive.”
Like other small companies, Seagrove potters had to adapt to a new way of doing business in person during the pandemic, and as a result, came up with new procedures and rules for their shops. Both Pärtna and Neef said they were limiting the number of people allowed to enter together and were requiring everyone to wear a mask. They also encourage visitors to use hand sanitizer and to observe social distance while browsing their wares. “We want them to feel safe and comfortable,” Neef noted.
All the potters I interviewed expressed similar perspectives about how people in North Carolina could best support the Seagrove community. Pärtna urged people to purchase locally homemade goods over mass-produced ones from overseas. Others agreed that buying Seagrove work constituted the best support. Neef summed it up: We can help the most by visiting Seagrove and continuing to make “the use and enjoyment of pottery part of the cultural heritage of North Carolina.”
Seagrove is rich in history, and its culture is constantly evolving. Its artisans drop a slab of dense clay onto a spinning wheel and shape it into something beautiful, creating not just a dish to sell, but, sometimes, a cobalt pie plate whose beauty accompanies its lucky purchaser into a changing world. The Seagrove community is accessible to us here in Holly Springs, just an hour and a half west toward the Uwharrie National Forest. It makes for an easy and enjoyable family day trip — and a safe one, with masking guidelines in place. I highly recommend exploring the area and seeing what it has to offer!
