From School to Pottery Shop: The Love Story of Two Artists

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Lee and Pup McCarty moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in the late 1940s to study at Ole Miss. Lee planned to be a scientist, but he was also interested in art, particularly in jewelry-making. It was Pup who decided to take a pottery class, but she was afraid to go by herself, because the class met at night and most of the class were football players. Lee went along as her companion and protector and they both came to love making pottery.

The couple later moved to New York for studies at Columbia University before returning to Oxford for Lee to teach at Ole Miss, while they continued making pottery. In 1954 Pup and Lee had a choice. They could move to California where they had been accepted at the Cranbrook Academy of Art or they could go back home to Merigold, Mississippi, where Lee’s mother was ill. As Lee McCarty said in an article in 1967, “We chose home — Aunt Margaret’s mule barn, Merigold.”

Lee and Pup settled in Uncle Albert’s mule barn, kindly offered by Aunt Margaret. Neither Albert nor Margaret were actually related to Lee, but their families had been close for generations. The couple set up a pottery shop downstairs and made themselves a home in the barn loft. Lee taught chemistry and physics at a nearby high school in the daytime while Pup managed the shop. At night both worked late making pots and jewelry. Lee said they “sweated in the summer and froze in the winter.”

In Oxford, Nobel-prize winning author William Faulkner had shown them a clay ravine behind his home Rowan Oak and offered it to them to create pottery. Lee and Pup continued to experiment with Mississippi clays and combined Lee’s knowledge of chemistry with Pup’s artistic eye to create unique glazes.

By the early 1960s, museums around the country were showing pottery made from Mississippi mud and created by Lee and Pup McCarty in tiny Merigold, Mississippi. By the 1970s, the McCartys had invented three signature glazes in nutmeg brown, cobalt blue, and jade.

I first saw McCarty pottery in the early 1980s, when we lived in Oxford, Mississippi. In those days, our main financial concerns were paying our mortgage and feeding and clothing our growing family. There certainly wasn’t money left over for art! Still, somehow we left Mississippi with one small McCarty plate in nutmeg brown.

McCarty Plate in Nutmeg Brown
McCarty Plate in Nutmeg Brown

The only background that I knew about the pottery before we visited Oxford recently was that it was made out of Mississippi mud by someone named McCarty and that the wavy line, which you can see in the photo above, represented the Mississippi River. While we were in Oxford on our recent trip, Ray and I saw many more pieces. I was especially impressed with those in cobalt blue. We also learned that we could visit the McCarty shop in Merigold. We decided to add that to our agenda when we came back through Mississippi on our way home from Texas.

We left Vicksburg and arrived in Merigold at mid-day. Our navigation device took us to the front door, but we drove right past it and had to call for directions. The girl who answered the phone offered to stand outside so we could find it. Here’s the entrance to Uncle Albert’s barn. You can see why we missed it!

Entrance to McCarty Pottery in Uncle Albert's Barn, Merigold, Mississippi
Entrance to McCarty Pottery in Uncle Albert’s Barn, Merigold, Mississippi

Here’s the front door behind the bamboo.

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Inside, we enjoyed the three small showrooms.

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In these two photos, you can see the three different glazes.

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When I had called ahead a day or two before about visiting the shop, the girl who answered the phone told me that we might like to see the gardens, too, and told me that they have been recognized by the Smithsonian. I have since learned that Pup and Lee created the gardens during the decades they were creating their pottery. The two trees and some azaleas Pup and Lee received as wedding presents are still at home in the garden.

Ray and I wandered from one breathtaking outdoor room to another . . .

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. . . before heading back inside the barn . . .

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. . . and then out the front door with a nutmeg brown rabbit, a small bowl, and a bluebird to join my lone plate from the 1980s and the sugar and creamer our friend Glenda gave us last month in Oxford.

The gift money that had been in my purse had finally found a worthy purchase, my new nutmeg rabbit.
The gift money that had been in my purse for months finally found a worthy purchase, this new nutmeg rabbit.

Lee and Pup McCarty stayed in love through more than six decades of marriage and almost that many years of being business partners. He brought her a flower every afternoon. Together they lived their values of frugality and conservatism with a hard work ethic and a commitment to being debt free.

Lee and Pup McCarty were not able to have children; but they spent much time with their godsons Jamie and Stephen Smith, whose parents were their best friends. In 1998 Jamie left his job as the branch manager of a company in Alabama and Stephen left his job as a lawyer in Georgia to return home to Merigold and help their godparents in the pottery business housed in the barn that once belonged to Margaret and Albert Smith, who were in actuality Jamie and Stephen’s great aunt and uncle.

Jamie began learning pottery from Lee and Pup when he was five. He runs the creative side of the business and Stephen runs the business side. Pup McCarty died in 2009 and Lee in 2015. Jamie and Stephen continue to work in the barn behind the bamboo in Merigold, Mississippi. In an interview a few years ago, a reporter asked Stephen if the McCartys envisioned how big their pottery business would become. He responded: “The Lord moves in mysterious ways. It grew beyond their wildest dreams and expectations.”*

I wonder what folks thought when Lee McCarty left teaching school to become a full-time potter in Margaret and Albert’s barn. Don’t be afraid to think outside the school! And don’t be afraid if your children are more artsy than schooly. They just might grow beyond your wildest dreams and expectations!

 But now, O Lord, You are our Father,
We are the clay, and You our potter;
And all of us are the work of Your hand.
Isaiah 64:8

*”McCarty’s Pottery Legacy,” by Robin Jackson, Jackson Free Press, November 26, 2012

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3 Comments

  1. Thank you, Mrs. Notgrass, for sharing the pottery post; the last sentences were just what I needed to read today! Those lines affirm that God has big plans for my artsy 13 year old son and He is teaching me a lot about thinking outside the school box!!

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