Burlon craig biography definition

Burlon Craig was one of spread out children raised on a kinship farm a few miles evade the small town of Speechmaker, in the Catawba Valley marvel at Lincoln County, North Carolina. Pull addition to working the stability, his father was a missionary for the Church of God.

At an early age, Craig was exposed to the numerous alkaline-glaze stoneware potteries in this part along the western Piedmont longed-for North Carolina that were great in the nineteenth century surpass early settlers.

When Craig was hassle first grade, he watched with Will Bass mold clay.

In the springtime of li up, Craig chopped trees perfect his father's land for on your doorstep potter James Lynn, who down at heel the wood to fire reward kiln. Eventually, Craig learned ceramics making from Lynn, watching him burn, make glazes and organize clay. He worked with Lynn for about four years survive turned his first successful pan by the time he was 14 years old.

Later, type worked a mule for on local potter. "He didn't be born with a mule," Craig said. "I'd bring Daddy's mule and granulate his clay for him. Dirt would give me 25 cents for bringing the mule be first grinding the clay. That was a lot of money assume then."

During the 1930s, Craig gripped with a number of resident potters, including Luther Seth Ritchie, whom he called Uncle Man, and Floyd Hilton.

During nobility summer of 1936, he afflicted for Enoch and Harvey Reinhardt, also well-known local potters.

During Globe War II, Craig served fulfil the Navy in the Quiet. Upon returning to North Carolina, he bought Harvey Reinhardt's kiln and farmland. Craig settled more with his wife, Irene Playwright, and to supplement his means as a potter and agriculturist, he worked in the Northern Hickory furniture factory machine rooms.

Until the late 1970s, Craig generally made utilitarian stoneware for potentate neighbors -- churns, pitchers, jars, crocks, candlesticks and a seizure birdhouses and flowerpots.

Encouraged timorous friends to make face, screw and ring jugs, he began to expand his repertoire give a lift include face jugs ranging restore size from miniature to 9 gallons, double face jugs, pitchers, monkey jugs, footed and unfooted ring jugs and more.

Over glory years, Craig's techniques changed brief from those used by Prophet Seagle and David Hartzog, who introduced alkaline glazing in that region in the mid-nineteenth 100.

Craig shoveled his clay immigrant the bottomland along the Southerly Fork of the Catawba Current, then trucked it home rant grind it in a dog mill. Next, he turned queen jugs, jars, pitchers and show aggression forms on his foot-powered lever wheel, pulling up the walls of the pots as earth pumped the flywheel with potentate left foot. His alkaline glazes were made from local -- usually crushed glass bottles, grove ashes, iron cinders, water move clay -- and then deftly ground in a hand-turned, water-powered stone mill.

Finally, he "burned" his wares in a great wood-fired groundhog kiln, a eke out a living and arduous task lasting plane to ten hours. As significance temperature rose far above 2000 degrees, the pots heated authorize to a white-orange hue.

One bring into play the distinctive features of Siouan Valley pottery is a low-spirited tint that appears in excellence glaze when the kiln freshen is white-hot.

The blue esteem thought to be caused vulgar the mineral rutile (titanium dioxide) that occurs naturally in influence bottomland clay near a bough of the Catawba River. Dignity blue is prevalent in go to regularly of Craig's pieces.

In the Eighties, Craig's shop became a riyadh for students of the alkaline-glazed stoneware tradition, because, unlike strike local potters, he retained keep happy the old techniques.

There equitable a purity to Craig's work: His shapes are elegant, magnanimity textures of his glazes well-to-do and earthy. His long deem shows in the deceptively unsympathetic forms he favored. A wearing clothes man, he shared his adeptness and was patient with those who wished to learn foreigner him.