POTTERY YARN

by Tim Brookover

Michael Brown has shepherded a powerful new exhibition of Texas pottery at the Museum of Fine Arts, including pieces made by the earliest manufactory in the state owned and operated by African-Americans. Brown, curator of the Bayou Bend collection, the museum's American decorative arts wing, has gathered 14 objects that date between the 1840s and the 1880s. Many of these derive from H. Wilson & Co., an enterprise begun after the Civil War by three brothers who had all worked as slaves in a pottery near Seguin. Crafted for daily use, their utilitarian jugs, jars, and butter churns now can be admired for their simplicity and subtle colors as well as their historical significance.

"H. Wilson & Co. marked a new beginning in a new age," Brown writes in the trim catalogue. "The manufactory's success afforded Hyrum, James, and Wallace Wilson an alternative to the sharecropping and tenant farming that essentially tied African-Americans to the land in a manner not unlike slavery. For Hyrum, the pottery provided a means to support his family and community and to serve as a spiritual leader. He became the symbol of what was now attainable in a new society."

The Wilson Potters: An African-American Enterprise in 19th-Century Texas remains at the museum through March 3, 2003. The H. Wilson & Co. pots will then return to Bayou Bend for permanent exhibition.