Lot 196: 1970's Southern Studio Pottery and Turned Wood Treen

Striped stoneware crock with cork by Michael Pitts c. 1977. Cylinder lidded pot by "H" with emerald green stripes has a major crack. Scored grey stoneware stamped "Bill Suggs" Bio on Missippi potter Bill Suggs: "From the early 1900s through 1956, W.D. Suggs Pottery produced whatever customers needed, from churns to flue thimbles to ash trays—all made by hand. William David (“Mr. Bill”) Suggs was an exacting craftsman whose wares looked good, functioned well and endured for generations. He learned the trade from his father, Joel Green Suggs, an Itawamba County farmer who operated a small pottery mainly to supply his own needs. Like his father, W.D. farmed. But he soon became a successful entrepreneur devoted to growing his family’s pottery business and teaching employees to produce high-quality products. By the early 1940s, sharecroppers were farming his land, and he was personally delivering truckloads of W.D. Suggs Pottery wares to stores and farms from Texas to Georgia. Suggs’ employees, it was said, could make anything out of clay. Suggs typically used three colors of glaze—white, brown and black. Many items were embellished with bands of cobalt blue glaze. Crocks and churns bore the blue company stamp and a number denoting the capacity in gallons. From living estate of Charles Rathbun.