Crafted in Clay: A Preview of The Met’s upcoming Edgefield Pottery Exhibition

Council Members are invited to a special preview of an upcoming exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring American pottery made in Edgefield, South Carolina. From extraction to forming and firing, Edgefield was a center of the most expressive imagery and glazing in early American ceramics. It was also a site of industry, where enslaved and free Black makers and indentured immigrant workers potted side-by-side.

Join us to hear Katherine Hughes, exhibition research fellow, open with her research on an 1829 masterpiece by the Baltimore-trained Edgefield potter Thomas Chandler depicting a scene by the Chesapeake Bay. Adrienne Spinozzi, exhibition curator, will then present her forthcoming exhibition which opens in fall 2022, highlighting The Met’s recent acquisition of an 1858 vessel by enslaved potter David Drake. We hope you can join us for this private preview to learn about Baltimore’s connection to this astounding American craft tradition.

Please RSVP by Friday, June 4, to specialevents@artbma.org. Zoom information to follow.

Crafted in Clay: A Preview of The Met’s upcoming Edgefield Pottery Exhibition is sponsored by J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

Image: Churn, 1829, Thomas Chandler. Image Courtesy of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, The William C. and Susan S. Mariner Collection.