design hunting

Meet Jim McDowell and His Face Jugs

The ceramicist keeps his ancestors’ traditions alive from his home studio in North Carolina.

“I have five-gallon buckets of clay when I am making pots,” Jim McDowell says, “and the slop I put in the buckets — now, the old-timers used to spit tobacco juice. I don’t do that.” He laughs. “I just pour apple-cider vinegar.” Photo: Jan Fisher
“I have five-gallon buckets of clay when I am making pots,” Jim McDowell says, “and the slop I put in the buckets — now, the old-timers used to spit tobacco juice. I don’t do that.” He laughs. “I just pour apple-cider vinegar.” Photo: Jan Fisher

Face jugs have a long history, going back to generations of enslaved people who created pottery with a spiritual purpose. Ceramicist Jim McDowell continues this tradition with his own work. He tells me his ancestors “amalgamated three religions: ancestor worship in Africa, voodoo in the islands, and Christianity,” and face jugs were a part of that. Because enslaved people were not permitted to have headstones, ceramics were often used to mark their graves; placing a face jug there served double duty. “They were so ugly they would scare the devil away from your grave so your soul could go to heaven,” McDowell says. And when installed near the house of the living, they could ward off evil.

Gallerist Alex Tieghi-Walker introduced us; he discovered McDowell on Instagram about a year ago. McDowell lives in Weaverville, North Carolina, with his wife, Jan, and they spoke with me about the art of this tradition.

McDowell was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in Washington, D.C. His father, James T. McDowell, was a Navy man and an artist and was known to the family as Ol’Pa. The McDowells have many of Ol’Pa’s paintings in their art-filled home.

McDowell’s studio is across the garden from his house. It’s where he brings his face jugs to life, as shown here in different stages of working the clay. Photo: Jan Fisher.
McDowell’s studio is across the garden from his house. It’s where he brings his face jugs to life, as shown here in different stages of working the cl... McDowell’s studio is across the garden from his house. It’s where he brings his face jugs to life, as shown here in different stages of working the clay. Photo: Jan Fisher.

He learned to use a potter’s wheel when he was in the Army stationed near Nuremberg, Germany, in the late ’60s. But even before then, he claims, “when I was 18 months old, I was in the sandbox playing with a substance that I thought was clay; it had a smell to it, and I liked it. And that stayed with me.” He starts laughing, perhaps thinking that it might sound odd to recall such an early memory, yet the work McDowell is now gaining fame for speaks to a blood memory that goes back over centuries. McDowell’s grandfather Boyce McDowell told him that his great, great, great, great grandmother Evangeline was a potter when she was enslaved in Jamaica.

McDowell’s personal path to working in clay began 35 years ago and really took off after he enrolled in a workshop with the potter David Robinson in Weare, New Hampshire. As McDowell explains on his website, he will often write on his face jugs to honor the bravery of the slave and potter David Drake, who was not only literate but signed his name on the pottery he created.

Jan McDowell named this face jug Fancy. It illustrates different narratives that go back to customs born of necessity during the slave trade. The blue mother-of-pearl glaze lends a soft aura. Her husband says, “There’s a story in a book called Farming While Black and research that reveals that when women knew they were being taken into captivity or being sold off from one plantation to another, they planted seeds in their hair. And so that just ignited me. I made four or five faces with seeds in their hair.” Photo: Jan Fisher
The living room includes “our little collection of folk art,” Jan says. “In the center, it’s one of those old-time tobacco trays; now you see them reproduced, but that is a genuine one from North Carolina. It’s still got rope hanging on it.” The painting in the middle of it is by Lisa Cain. The surrounding work is by artist Roff Graves, who has shown McDowell’s work in his gallery. Photo: Jan Fisher
In one corner of the living room, behind the Eames rocker, is a painting of a saxophone player by McDowell’s father. A blue ceramic mask by McDowell hangs on the wall by a vintage turquoise lamp Jan found on eBay. The little stool, she says, “is some sort of trinket from an import shop. I didn’t even pay $30 for it.” Photo: Jan Fisher
A view from the dining table toward the wall with a landscape painting and self-portrait by McDowell’s father. McDowell’s face jugs are lined up beneath the landscape, and a selection of his pots are on top of the glass-front cabinet. Photo: Jan Fisher
The opposite wall includes a sign for a show McDowell did with his father; the painted-driftwood piece Heaven or Hell Is Inside You Choose, by Roff Graves; and a clock made of recycled pallet wood, which was found on Etsy. Below it is another of McDowell’s sculptures. Photo: Jan Fisher
Three views of a very special face jug that Jan picked out as a gift from McDowell after he proposed to her. “I call that my engagement ring,” she says, laughing. He felt it was overfired, but she stuck by her choice. “I think it’s gorgeous. It’s pure black, and sometimes Jim puts glass on some of the faces so then the glass melts and it streams down the face like tears.” McDowell tells me that he calls this piece Labashia, which, he says, “means ‘babies,’ and that means that she is my baby.” Photo: Jan Fisher.
Three views of a very special face jug that Jan picked out as a gift from McDowell after he proposed to her. “I call that my engagement ring,” she say... Three views of a very special face jug that Jan picked out as a gift from McDowell after he proposed to her. “I call that my engagement ring,” she says, laughing. He felt it was overfired, but she stuck by her choice. “I think it’s gorgeous. It’s pure black, and sometimes Jim puts glass on some of the faces so then the glass melts and it streams down the face like tears.” McDowell tells me that he calls this piece Labashia, which, he says, “means ‘babies,’ and that means that she is my baby.” Photo: Jan Fisher.
One of McDowell’s face jugs in the garden, planted with ferns. “A year or so after the studio was built,” Jan says, “we were able to buy a large storeroom for all the new pieces and pieces not in galleries, so I went down to pick out some that I like.” It’s their own little sanctuary. Photo: Jan Fisher
Meet Jim McDowell and His Face Jugs