Small, dark colored ceramic vessel with a handle and spout at the top. The front of the vessel looks like a face, with two round forms making the eyes, a long, thin form a nose, and an oval form the mouth. Two ear-like shapes protude from the side of the vessel.

Face Jug

c. 1860

Artist unknown (American, 19th century) Edgefield District, South Carolina

Edgefield county

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.

Stoneware and alkaline glaze

African American artists

African Diaspora

Arts of the Americas