State

Page Sixteen THE STAT E November 18, 1933 Busbees, of Jugtown Meet the THEY'VE made Jugtown and its jugs famous, and they've also been responsible — indirectly — for the epidemic of colored pottery that you see along the highways of North Carolina. Mr. Robertson tells you how they started their business and also how they are enjoying life in the hills of Moore County. ★ By A. T. ROBERTSON, JR. ★ MR. and Mr#. Jacques Busboo are sort of used to being writ¬ ten it]» in the papers, although they probably have received many more inches of space in national mag¬ azines and Northern newspapers than they have in the North Carolina press. In fact North Carolina, as a State, has always sort of ignored the Busbees and their pottery— whether because it doesn’t seem ns wonderful to us as it does to outsiders, or whether we have just got used to them, I don’t know. Anyway, I would nominate Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Busbee— it is impossible to separate them in writing about them —as among the State's most interest¬ ing characters. Their hideout is called Jugtown. It is in the northwestern corner of Moore County, among rolling hills, in a sec¬ tion which is backwoods even today. They live in a log cabin without elec¬ tric' lights or running water. They surpervise the famous pottery which they began. Jacques feeds the pup¬ pies. rends a little, smokes too much, and will talk at great length to any callers. So will Julianna, although she seems to get more done, in the way of writing articles, addressing serious-minded women's gatherings on the subject of native art, and serving on the school hoard of Sheffield town¬ ship, which boasts as fine a two-teacher, backwoods school as North Carolina has to show. Both Jacques and liis wife, who was Miss Royster, arc natives of Raleigh and were born and bred in the briar patch, but both went up to New York quite some years ago and became artists in Greenwich Village. ’Twns there they met and wed. They knew many of the celebrities of whom Green¬ wich Village formerly boasted, among them Howard Scott of the technocracy bubble. In 1917 Jacques carried out an idea he had been thinking of for years. Пе came down to Moore County and re¬ vived the pottery industry which has been native to the section since the first potters came to this country from Staffordshire before the Revolution. The craft, what with the machine age and all, was just about dead at the time. But from the Revolution through the Civil War, when the Jug- town region supplied ware for the Confederate hospitals, it had flour¬ ished, and the tradition of the craft was strong. It was Busbee’s idea to revive it not only as a trade but as an art. lie was, with his own immediate product, very successful. It met a cordial reception and commanded pre¬ mium prices on the Northern market, and still does, for it is truly beautiful stuff. But his idea of reviving it as an art throughout the State didn't turn out just as lie planned. Other potters, seeing that Jugtown ware sold well, set up roadside stands and pro¬ ceeded to sell garishly-colored pots to the passing tourists, just as fast as they could possibly turn them out. Tt is true that several of the other local potteries in the Jugtown vicinity bear an excellent reputation but the Bus- bees* most noticeable contribution to the State has been the epidemic of roadside pottery, which, spreading from North Carolina all over the Union, has become close to being a national nuisance. All this, however, has had nothing to do with the life of the Busbees. They are many miles from a paved road, and the occasional Yankee lady tourist from Pinehurst or Southern Pines, who has heard of their fame, will be taken down a peg or so if she ★ fails to realize that she has a pair of artists to deal with. Their chief interest is nowadays in books and people. They both stay pretty close to their Jugtown cabin, but the world has a way of coming to sec them. For the commencement at Needham's Grove, a Senator, Congress¬ man, or Governor may make the ad¬ dress, and retire afterwards to the Busbees’ cabin for well-earned refresh¬ ment. also of. local origin. If there are neighltfirs there, the talk is good country talk. After the neighbors are gone, it lies pretty high into the realm of poetry. Statewide gossip, North Carolinian art, and the kind of jokes that nice people tell nowadays. Out¬ side. the dogs bark in the lonely night and it is fifteen miles to the nearest telephone and the folks round about speak the English language of Shakes¬ peare’s day and keep sheep and spin their thread and weave cloth and make their clothes, just as they’ve always done. Jacques and Julianna are part of both worlds. If a locul girl or boy- get into trouble, they know where to turn. If a school teacher friend is fed up with city life and wants to get as far away as possible, she knows where to go for a visit. The contrast between two worlds is what the Busbees enjoy; in fact it is ' almost the breath of life to them. The “radicalism” of Greenwich Village «lays has become the commonplace of today, and Jacques’ occasional shock- ers wouhl be very mild indeed at most any gay party in North Carolina to¬ il ay. Mrs. Busbee’s sincere devotion to the integrity of a native art no longer marks her a prophet in the wilderness, for the Federal Govern¬ ment itself, through the Tennessee Valley Authority, is beginning to translate her dreams into action. The world, in short, is beginning to catch up with them. The days when they were thought of — if they were thought of at all in their home State — as a pair of cranks, is now over and the cynical observer might write them down as a trifle passe. But not any¬ one who knows them. There is a fresh¬ ness of spirit about these two Tar Heels who found real happiness in the backwoods. It is one of the privileges of their particular sort of tempera¬ ment never to grow old.