revised on September 23, 2004
Illustrations: You can find illustrations of North Carolina Moravian colonial pottery in illustrations 1-4 in chapter 1 of Turners and Burners. A nice Rudolf Christ sugar bowl can be found at the Metropolitan Museum (New York) website at the following address: http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/all/sugar_bowl_rudolph_christ/objectview_zoom.aspx?page=1&sort=0&sortdir=asc&keyword=&fp=1&dd1=0&dd2=0&vw=0&collID=1&OID=10002468&vT=1 Please check out the map and the location of the original pottery house at Bethabara at the Bethabara Park Website and its map and music (click here). See additionally the related website at http://www.foodhistory.com/foodnotes/road/wsnc/bb/01/ See the Moravian Church (click here for history) and also Old Salem Online (click here).
A. Who were the Moravians? Where did they come from?
The Moravians of Pennsylvania and North Carolina trace their heritage back to the followers of John Hus, the martyr of Bohemia, who was burned at the stake in 1415 for his aggressive efforts to raise the Scriptures above the official canons of the Church. In 1457 one group of Hussites took the Latin name of Unitas Fratrum, Unity of the Brethren. The Brethren were able to intermittently expand their following across central Europe from modern-day Czechoslovakia through southern Germany and Poland. Although they faced persecution in most places, they wereable to revive their sect in the early 18th century partly through the success of the German Pietist movement and especially due to the protection of a young Lutheran nobleman, Nicholas Lewis, Count of Zinzendorf, who in 1722 allowed them to settle on his land in Saxony. The Brethren founded a town that they called Herrnhut, literally meaning in German, "the Lord's care." They came to be known as Moravians, since the original settlers of Herrnhut were from the region of Moravia.
B. How did the Moravians get started in North Carolina? Where did the name "Wachovia" come from? What kind of community did they establish in NC?
In 1735, eight years after the establishment of the church at Herrnhut, a colony and mission to the Indians was set up in the American territory of Georgia. This was abandoned in five years for settlements in the northern territories. In 1742 the town of Bethlehem was established in the colony of Pennsylvania and became the central Moravian town in the New World. After exploring North Carolina, the Brethren managed to purchase a tract of nearly 100,000 acres from Lord Granville, who represent English interests in America. The land was named Wachau, or Wachovia in English, after the ancestral land of Count Zinzendorf and the neighboring Wach River in Saxony. The first community was established in 1754 and called Bethabara, meaning "house of passage" in Hebrew, possibly alluding to the fact that the settlement was considred to be temporary (In the Bible, Bethabr was also the place along the Jordan River where Christ first encountered John the Baptist conducting baptisms). In 1759 a second settlement, Bethania, was established three mile northwest of Bethabara. In 1765 construction began on a central town for the entire region. Called Salem, derived from the Hebrew word for peace, the new town was established in 1772 and drew upon the surrounding area and the other colonies for its resident population.
Salem was a congregation town, where the church owned all the land, leasing lots to people to build their homes and shops. The congregation owned and operated five of the leading businesses, which included the tanyard, tavern, store, pottery and mill. It paid salaries and gave bonuses to individuals who worked at these places. The congregation did not exercise jurisdiction over other trades and crafts, which were responsible for themselves in making and selling goods. Yet, various boards of the Congregation did watch over public conduct in the community. People were divided up into choirs based on their age, gender and marital status. Choir members often lived under the same roof with certain common expectations set for them. The closed-knit system fostered protection for its members, encouraged discipline and set standards of production for the community.
C. Who was Gottfried Aust? What Steps did he take to establish a pottery in North Carolina?
The Moravian Community in NC distinguished itself as one of the most important pottery centers in colonial America due to the talent and resourcefulness of its first potter, Gottfried Aust, and his successors Rudolf Christ, John Holland, and Henry Schaffner in Salem. Gottlob Krause and John Butner remained in Bethabara.
Aust was born in 1722 at Heidersdorf in Silesia (now Czechoslovakia). He was the son of a linen weaver and had trained as a weaver from his father before he left home for Herrnhut in 1742. Very soon in 1743 Aust became apprenticed to a potter, Brother Andreas Dober. In accordance with the guild system, Aust completed an apprenticeship and then spent several years as a journeyman assistant in Hernnhut, possibly with Dober's shop, to demonstrate his abilities before being accepted as a master craftsman. One area of emphasis for the Moravian Brethren in the Old and New World was a strong and diverse craft system which would strengthen their frontier communities. Aust sailed to America in 1754 with 54 other single brethren. He was given interim employment in Bethlehem Pottery for 10 months, before traveling on wagon to Bethabara with a number of other settlers. There were few craftsmen in the region when Aust arrived in 1755. The small town of Hillsborough lay 60 miles away to the east, while the Trading Ford was south and east about 50 miles away. There, where the ancient Indian Trading Path crossed the Yadkin River, English traders, the Catawba and the Cherokee had established a trading center for decades. In the area of Wachovia, there were few trades like weaving and blacksmithing that were carried out beyond the customary household handicrafts.
As soon as he arrived at Bethabara, Aust went to work in establishing a pottery. Within 2 weeks of his arrival, Aust went out to look for flint, or silica, to be used in lead glaze for earthenware ceramics. The flint was dug and then finely ground in the Community's new grist mill. Aust had no great difficulty in obtaining other glaze materials. Small quantities of red lead, usually used in the eighteenth century as a flux in order to fuse the silica at lower temperatures, could be found in the Community general store, since it was also used in its "red lead" or calcinated, ashen state by other craftsmen, like painters. The third glaze ingredient, alumina, was obtained from the fine kaolin clay found in small quantities in Wachovia and outside the region. This ingredient firmed up the glaze so that it would not run when it was molten. The glaze proportions were roughly 2 parts of flint to one part of lead and kaolin combined, although the exact glaze formula is not known.
In the general region Aust found secondary clay beds in the area deposited by the tributaries running southwest from Wachovia to the Yadkin River. This "dug" or "ordinary" clay was differentiated from the "pipe clay." The common clay, consisting mostly of quartz silica and alumina, was dug out of the banks of the creek known as "Manakas," or Monocasy, in the Bethabara area, which flowed into a larger tributary called the "Johannes." Clay in this region was of a relatively low iron content, unlike the redder clays used by earthenware potters in the north. In Bethabara, such clay burned to a light red or pink in the kiln, while the clay found at the potters' meadow in Salem, was more buff or yellow in color when fired. This clay from the Wachovia general region was sufficiently fine enough in the ground so that it did not have to be processed. Aust and his associates did not seem to make use of horse-drawn pug mills, as in the north. They would simply pick pieces of quartz or root matter from the clay before it was shaped. One can see small pieces of stone in Moravian redware.
The more precious kaolin, or "white clay," as it was referred to in Wachovian records, was dug from a rare pocket that Aust found near Bethabara. The Salem potters limited its use to slips and pipeheads, since it had to be hauled from Bethabara.
Archaeologist Stanley South has located the Bethabara pottery shop of 1856 on a stone foundation of 9 X 20 feet, which included the potter's wheel and workroom area. Behind the shop was a second area of the same measurement (9 X 20), built of lighter materials perhaps as a covered shed. South suggested that this was the drying area for greenware and the clay wedging floor (in the corner). Just outside the shed and close to the wedging floor (inside) was a 2.5 X 3.5 foot mortared structure (fastened with gray potter's clay) that most likely represented the small vertical kiln where in April 1756 Aust fired his first pottery at Bethabara. Small clay pipes were found around the excavated pit and mortared enclosure. An 18 X 24 foot addition was added to the west side of the orginal pottery building in the early to middle 1760s, where a second stone clay wedging floor was discovered. South also noted in his Historical Archaeology of Wachovia that three or so other small buildings, serving as pottery shop dependencies, existed just to the south of the shop. These structures could have served as a storage cellar and two drying sheds.
D. What Ceramic Needs did the Moravians and the Fremden have right away?
In mid-December, several weeks after his arrival at Bethabara, Aust was ready to turn ware on the wheel. In March Aust moved into a new pottery building and in April built a kiln in which he fired bisque ware, when the green clay vessels were fired to a hard consistency. In August he fired glazed pottery for the first time. The Moravian ceramists thus fired their ware twice. New England potters, on the other hand, applied glaze to the green, unfired pots. By September, a Moravian diary would record that "Brother Aust burned pottery today on Sept. 10 for the second time--the glazing did well--and so the great need is at last relieved. Each living room now has the ware it needs, and the kitchen is furnished. There is also a set of mugs of uniform size for Lovefeast (agape: common song service with meal)."
Two months later Aust fired his first stove tiles, so that he could set up stoves as soon as possible in the Community House and the Brothers House. Aust probably brought master patterns for stove tiles from Bethlehem, just as he likely had a pipe press that was imported. These were probably the first tile stoves in North Carolina. Tile (ceramic) stoves were not found much in colonial America, since the English colonists preferred open fireplaces for heat. Early in the 19th century, the iron six- and ten-plate stoves came into favor in America. The tile stove however was more efficient than the open fire of the hearth, since it created a large radiant area while a sheet iron stove pipe could be routed through the walls of a house, greatly saving on the amount of brick masonry needed in house building. The German areas of Pennsylvania purchased their tile stoves from Moravian manufactures in America.
By 1761, after the cessation of the French and Indian War, Aust began to supply the needs of Fremden, or strangers (in German) of the region. People frequently came from up to 60 miles away to purchase pottery from Aust's shop. Merchants and storekeepers made arrangements beforehand so that they could periodically carry off a wagonload of ceramics. Merchants as far away as the Watauga settlements in Tennessee and the Pinetree area in South Carolina, on the Wateree River, came to Bethabara to purchase lots of ceramic wares. It was expensive for general stores in the NC Piedmont to stock ceramics from Pennsylvania, the east coast and the northern colonies. Money was scarce in the back country, so that Aust and Christ had to rely on the barter system, over cash, as the most common system of exchange. Deer hides, butter, tallow, flax, cotton, woven cloth, corn, and processed tobacco were frequently the bartered goods of pottery buyers. Such goods taken in trade were turned over to the Community Store, and the transaction was recorded in the financial records of the Congregation.