Sign-In
Cart
Of Mules and Mud: The Story of Alabama Folk Potter Jerry Brown
Paperback
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9780817360375
Publisher: Univ Of Alabama Pr
Published: Mar 29 2022
Pages: 136
Weight: 0.70
Height: 0.39 Width: 6.06 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
The life and times of Alabama folk potter Jerry Brown, as told in his own words
Born in 1942, Jerry Brown helped out in his father's pottery shop as a young boy. There he learned the methods and techniques for making pottery in a family tradition dating back to the 1830s. His responsibilities included tending the mule that drove the mill that was used to mix clay (called mud by traditional potters). Business suffered as demand for stoneware churns, jugs, and chamber pots waned in the postwar years, and manufacture ceased following the deaths of Brown's father and brother in the mid-1960s. Brown turned to logging for his livelihood, his skill with mules proving useful in working difficult and otherwise inaccessible terrain. In the early 1980s, he returned to the family trade and opened a new shop that relied on the same methods of production with which he had grown up, including a mule-powered mill for mixing clay and the use of a wood-fired rather than gas-fueled kiln.
Folklorist Joey Brackner met Brown in 1983, and the two quickly became close friends who collaborated together on a variety of documentary and educational projects in succeeding years--efforts that led to greater exposure, commercial success, and Brown's recognition as a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts. For years, Brown spoke of the urge to write his life story, but he never set pen to paper. In 2015, Brackner took the initiative and interviewed Brown, recording his life story over the course of a weekend at Brown's home. Of Mules and Mud is the result of that marathon interview session, conducted one year before Brown passed away.
Brackner has captured Jerry Brown's life in his own words as recounted that weekend, lightly edited and elaborated. Of Mules and Mud is illustrated with photos from all phases of Brown's life, including a color gallery of 28 photos of vessel forms made by Brown throughout his career that collectors of folk pottery will find invaluable.
Also in
Artists
Trudeau & Doonesbury: A Biography: The Cartoonist Who Turned the News Into Art
Kendall, Joshua
Hardcover
Glorious Country: How the Artist Frederic Church Brought the World to America and America to the World
Johnson, Victoria
Hardcover
The Black Family Who Built America: The McKissacks, Two Centuries of Daring Pioneers
McKissack Daniel, Cheryl
Hardcover
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki: The Influences and Inspiration Behind the Iconic Films
Rapold, Nicolas
Hardcover
Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher: The Epic Life and Immortal Photographs of Edward Curtis
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It
Kurtz, Glenn
Hardcover
The Genius in the Design: Bernini, Borromini, and the Rivalry That Transformed Rome
Morrissey, Jake
Paperback
Autopsy of My Former Self: A journey through grief, transformation, addiction, personal triumph, and purpose
Burse, Jermaine Danté
Paperback
Impossible: The Love Affair Between Marcel Duchamp and Maria Martins, and the Artwork It Inspired
Naumann, Francis M.
Hardcover
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
Rozzo, Mark
Paperback
Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination
Jones, Brian Jay
Paperback
Modigliani: Man and Myth - Biography and Works of Italian Painter and Sculptor Amedeo Modigliani
Modigliani, Jeanne
Paperback
Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture
Thoreson, Trygve
Paperback
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin
Weschler, Lawrence
Paperback
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol [50th Anniversary Edition]: From A to B and Back Again
Warhol, Andy
Paperback
William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love: Art, Poetry, and the Imagining of a New World
Hoare, Philip
Hardcover
Composing Olana: A Journey on Foot Through Frederic Church's Greatest Work of Art
LaFarge, Annik
Paperback
Utterly Lazy and Inattentive: Martin Parr: My Words, My Photographs
Jones, Wendy
Parr, Martin
Hardcover
Warhol's Muses: The Artists, Misfits, and Superstars Destroyed by the Factory Fame Machine
Leamer, Laurence
Hardcover
The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle: Vol. 1: A True and Exact Accounting of the History of Turtle Island
Monkman, Kent
Gordon, Gisele
Paperback
Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal: The Life and Times of a Female Impersonator
Roy, Sandip
Hardcover
Art Above Everything: One Woman's Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life
Griest, Stephanie Elizondo
Hardcover
Footnote to History: From Hungary to America. The Memoir of a Holocaust Survivor
Laszlo, Andrew
Paperback
The Artist and His Museum: Charles Willson Peale and the First Public Museum in the United States
Webber, Diane
Paperback