Vernon Owens (born 1941) American, Signed Jugtown Pottery Art Vase. Grey glaze, painted floral design circling shoulder. Signed by the artist on bottom, stamped "Jugtown Ware," and dated 1997. Paper label with more information attached to the inside lip. 

Condition: Small spot of yellow on one side but overall good. 

Size: 6 x 6 x 12 in. 

Jugtown Pottery was founded in 1921 by Jacques and Juliana Busbee, artists from Raleigh, North Carolina, who in 1917 discovered an orange pie dish and traced it back to Moore County. There, they found a local tradition of utilitarian pottery in orange, earthenware, and salt glazes. The Busbees saw an opportunity to help save a dying craft, and in 1918 they set up the Village Store in Greenwich Village, New York, in order to sell the pottery. Potters they worked with over the years included J. H. Owen, Charlie Teague, and Ben Owen. Jacques died in 1947, and in 1960 John Mare bought Jugtown Pottery and hired Vernon Owens as the Jugtown thrower. After the sudden deaths of both Mare and Juliana in 1962, Owens leased the business and kept it going for six years, until it was sold to Country Roads, Inc., a nonprofit organization working toward the preservation of hand crafts. Nancy Sweezy served as director and potter, and changed the earthenware glazes to fritted lead glazes, before developing a new line of high temperature glazes in order to make them lead-free. She also developed a completely different line of complex colors, including Blueridge Blue, Cinnamon, a different Tobacco Spit, Mustard, and Dogwood White. Sweezy also set up an apprenticeship program that served over thirty pottery students from 1969 through 1980, creating a new generation of potters in the Appalachian traditions. In 1983 Country Roads sold the company back to Owens, who continues to run it along with his wife Pam. His work continuing to innovate and revitalize the local pottery scene led him to be awarded a National Endowment for the Arts in 1996, which brought international attention to the small pottery facility. Pam and Vernon opened the Jugtown Museum in 1988, which eventually led to the facility being listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The area has since been renamed Pottery Road, thanks in part to them and multiple other potteries that have opened along North Carolina Highway 705 to capitalize on the attention these folk arts have attracted. 

Small spot of yellow on one side but overall good.