The Famous McCartys Pottery That Comes from the Mississippi Delta

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Learn more on Tech Stuff on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. McCarty's pottery was founded in 1954 and is known all over the world today. It all started in the tiny Mississippi delta town of Marigold and still stands 65 years plus later. Here's Stephen Smith, one of the god sons of Lee and Pup McCarty, who now runs the business with his brother. You'll hear me refer to Lee and Pup as uncle and aunt. Now, actually, my brother and I are not blood related at all. We are related, as Uncle Lee would say, by love.

The whole connection, if you will, starts in a very small town sort of way in the sense that friends of family become family over time. We probably all had that situation where you're 14, you're 15 years old and you think, well, exactly how are we related to Aunt Susie? And your mother says, well, we're not related at all.

And you think, well, wait a minute. She's been at every birthday party. She comes to Christmas and you mean we're not blood related? And your mother says, no, she's just a very dear friend.

So that was the same situation with us. Uncle Lee, of course, grew up in Marigold. He was born in 1923. Marigold is 23 miles from the river and we're about 200 miles south of Memphis. So Marigold is spelled with an E, not an A.

We're not named after the flower. We're named after Colonel Frank Marigold who came here in the 1870s and started clearing the land. And then the railroad came in 1882.

My great grandfather was the depot agent and telographer for the railroad. And then the town was actually incorporated in 1908. Now, at that time, the interior part of Baltimore County, Mississippi, which is where we are now, was nothing but swamp.

Civilization was on what people in the Delta referred to as the riverside. The interior part of the county was all wilderness. Then gradually, as people moved into the interior part of the county, they started clearing the land, such as Colonel Marigold. And civilization began to come to the interior part of Baltimore County. And we had two county seats in Baltimore County because the officials wanted to make sure that people could get to the courthouse on horseback and then return home before dark on horseback. So that's why we have two county seats. And the odd thing about the Mississippi Delta is that in the late 1800s, we were really entering the 19th century.

The rest of the state was moving toward the 20th century. When the town was incorporated in 1908, the people were shocked to learn that there would be a town marshal. Now, they knew they were getting a mayor, but they did not know they were going to get a lawman that would tell them what to do. They didn't like that. They were of the opinion that they didn't need some lawman telling them what to do, and if there was a problem, they would work it out amongst themselves.

So again, very much that frontier mentality. Another great example of that is that the townspeople were resistant to the idea of a school. They did not want their children going to school. Their idea was that the children needed to work. They had land to clear, things to do, and they saw very little value in an education.

But again, this is going back to that frontier mentality, and it goes to show you how we were entering, again, the 19th century, when the rest of the state was progressing into the 20th century. So Uncle Lee and Aunt Pup met at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Uncle Lee then went off to World War II and then returned. By that time, Aunt Pup had graduated. They married in 1947, and then Uncle Lee and Aunt Pup went to Oxford, Mississippi, where Uncle Lee attended the University of Mississippi and received his B.A. in Education. Then from there, they went to New York City, where he received his Master's in Education at Columbia University, and then they returned to Ole Miss, where Uncle Lee taught in the Demonstration School, which was a fully functioning high school attached to the university. While Aunt Pup was at Delta State, she had actually studied painting, but she was very interested in art naturally, and she had never taken pottery. Now, at that time, Ole Miss was very small, and Oxford was very small as well. Everybody knew each other, and they knew the chancellor of the university, who was Chancellor J.D.

Williams. Aunt Pup asked J.D., as he was known, if she could take a pottery class, and J.D. said, Well, of course, Pup. You go on down and just tell the professor that I said it was okay. Great.

Now, again, Ole Miss being very small at the time, that was sufficient. So she arrived early, and she told the professor that she was there to take the class, to audit the class, and that J.D. had said it was okay. Well, naturally, that's fine. So he said, Well, just have a seat.

We'll wait for the rest of the class to arrive. Pretty soon, a big fella walked in, another big fella, and then a whole bunch of big fellas walked in, and she realized pretty quickly she was taking pottery with the Ole Miss football team, and she was the only female in the class. So she went home that night, and she said, Lee, guess what? And he said, What? And she said, You are going to take pottery.

And he did. That's how they discovered their love and talent for pottery. So in some ways, a happenchance of life, but in other ways, we all have a purpose in life, and this was theirs, and they discovered it. So they had a little house at 210 South Lamar Street, which is theirs still today. There's a little garage attached to the home, and that's where they had their first studio. They had Uncle Lee's kickwheel in there, a small little kiln, but then, of course, they needed clay. Well, one day in class, Uncle Lee mentioned offhandedly that he needed clay, and a young lady raised her hand, and he said, Yes. And she said, Well, Mr. Lee, if you need clay, why don't you call Dad, and I'm sure you can go over to the house and get all the clay you want.

And he said, Okay. Well, the child was Jill Faulkner, the daughter of William Faulkner, and the house, of course, was Rowan Oak, which is still there today, and Uncle Lee would go and dig the clay that he needed at Rowan Oak, take it back to the house, wedge it, and then they would use that clay. So the very first pieces they made were from the clay at Rowan Oak. And you're listening to Stephen Smith tell the story of how McCarty's pottery, well, how it started, one of the nation's finest pottery makers right here in Mississippi.

We broadcast from Oxford, Mississippi, the home of Ole Miss, a beautiful town in our south of Memphis. When we come back, more of the story of McCarty's pottery here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns, but we truly can't do this show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

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Subscription auto-renews. And we return to our American stories and to the story of McCarty's Pottery. When we last left off, we'd heard about the small town of Merigold, the Mississippi delta town where this famous pottery comes from. Let's continue with the story of the founders behind it, Lee and Pup McCarty. Here's their godson, Stephen Smith. Uncle Lee, because of being born in 1923, he knew my great-grandfather. He knew the original settlers of Merigold.

He knew those frontier people personally. And that same sense of independence came through to Uncle Lee and through Unc to Aunt Pup. And all of that influenced their art and their mentality of running a business. Uncle Lee and Aunt Pup refused all offers of help when they started the business. They wanted to do everything on their own. They didn't want assistance from a bank.

They refused help from family members. As Uncle Lee told me, they did not want to be beholden to anyone. They wanted to live life on their own terms. They wanted to create their art on their own terms. And they felt that if they took assistance from anyone, they would have some means of control, and they did not want that. And that goes back to that same sense of the settlers when they first came to Merigold. These were people who were carving civilization out of a swamp.

They didn't have any help from anybody. They were doing it on their own. Now, why in the world did two young artists who had every opportunity to go to New York, go to San Francisco, wherever they wanted to go, why in the world would they return to a very rural, isolated area, which certainly was the Mississippi Delta in the early 1950s? Well, it was home.

It's where they wanted to be. So they returned to Merigold, but then came the question of their art. And it was Aunt Pup's idea to create the business, not Uncle Lee's. Aunt Pup decided that they would have a studio in Merigold and sell pottery.

Now, what to do for a studio? Of course, they didn't have any money. At that time, Uncle Albert and Aunt Margaret had mechanized the farm to the point that they no longer needed mules in town. So the mule barn was empty. So they said, well, just take the mule barn and use that as your studio, which they did. They started out in this dilapidated barn. They put Uncle Lee's kickwheel in, two kilns. They remodeled the hayloft and moved upstairs. They didn't have air conditioning. Now, imagine you're living above two kilns, firing at over 2,000 degrees, you have no air conditioning, heat rises, and you're in the Mississippi Delta in, say, July.

What do you do? Well, they would put a mattress at the very edge of the hayloft. They'd open the French doors. There was a screen there to keep the mosquitoes out. And then they'd turn on a fan. And then they would just suffer.

If you want the definition of a young, struggling artist, that's it. And that's how they started out. They opened the business in August 15, 1954.

And then, as they say, the rest is history. We put the pool in in 1964. So, again, we opened the business in 54. I was born in 66, my brother in 62. And in the afternoons, as small children, we would go and we would swim in the afternoons. So this would be the late 60s, the early 70s. Well, Uncle Ian and Pop had a hard and fast rule that if they had a customer, we had to get out of the pool. Okay.

Which totally makes sense, obviously. Well, as a child, I never remember getting out of the pool because they didn't have any customers. Now, I handle the business affairs now for the studio. My brother's a potter. And I look back on that time on a Saturday, which in the retail world, that's your busy day.

That's the day you pay your bills. And I am horrified to think that we didn't have any customers in. But this is the real tribute to Uncle Ian and Pop as artists. The fact that they didn't have a customer didn't bother them at all.

They loved the moment that they were there with us, swimming in the pool, and it didn't bother them that they weren't making any money. But now, of course, there was always a balance between the business and art. And they always, if you will, erred on the side of art.

That came first. But, and Pop was a very astute business lady as well. Even if they didn't have a customer, they remained open. We never did advertising. Uncle Ian and Pop didn't believe in signs. We didn't have a sign out front, still don't have a sign out front.

Now, that's a very artistic thing. I mean, why in the world wouldn't you have a sign? Why wouldn't you advertise? You're a business person. Well, Uncle Ian and Pop were both of the opinion that if you create something of quality, people will come to you.

You don't need to advertise. Now, that's a very artistic idea, but that was the way they operated. Also, they would always close the business the last week of December, the month of January.

We would close. And they would go to Acapulco. And they had a wonderful friend down there, Senior Lalo. They had a little hotel, 35 rooms. And they would go along with other artists, writers, poets, sculptors who were all friends. And they would stay down there for a month and sort of recharge after a hard year of work. Now, again, that is very artistic.

What business person in the world would just close their business for five weeks and leave town? They did. Now, of course, because of Uncle Lee's chemistry background, we developed all of our own glazes. They're all his formulas. He would work on the formula.

And Pop would help critique the way it turned out because they would run a number of test pieces. Primarily, there are three glazes. There's the Nutmeg, which is a brown, Cobalt Blue, and Jade, which is a green kind of aquamarine. Then Uncle Lee and Aunt Pop also developed a wonderful trademark signature of the Mississippi River, which is a black, squiggly little curly line on the pieces. Both the name McCarty's and the river are trademarked.

The glazes are all lead-freezed. You can eat off of them, serve off of them, and use them. Uncle Lee and Aunt Pop wanted to make sure that people would enjoy their art, but then also that it was functional and that you could actually use it and enjoy it even more.

So it looks great in your china cabinet, but then you can take it down, use it for a party, and then put it back. When Uncle Lee and Aunt Pop first started out, like every young artist, you want to establish yourself. And so they wanted to be seen. And so they had shows, and they were very fortunate. They had shows all over the country. They were at the Museum of Art in Denver, in Houston. There was one in a show in New York. And then they also had a showing, an art fair, if you will, at the Delgado Museum in New Orleans in 1961, and they won first place. And then really after that, they stopped showing as such.

They wanted to focus on their art in Marigold. And so they really stopped any museum shows and that sort of thing after that point. Now, that being said, there were in the 90s several retrospectives. The University of Florida did a wonderful retrospective of their work. The University of Mississippi also did a beautiful retrospective in 1995.

The Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel, Mississippi, which is a beautiful museum, they also had a retrospective. In 1996, the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters gave them a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2012, the Mississippi Arts Commission gave Uncle E and Aunt Puff the Governor's Award in Excellence in the Visual Arts. So that was a wonderful ceremony. It was a great honor as well.

In 2015, Uncle E was inducted into the Ole Miss Alumni Hall of Fame. And then Mississippi Museum of Art had the permanent installation in 2018. So all great honors and a very fortunate career along those lines. But ultimately, their focus was on their art and being right here in Little Marigold, Mississippi. That was their real true passion.

And we're listening to Stephen Smith tell the story of McCarty's Pottery. And you're hearing about a remarkable resilience and independence that the founders of this enterprise were born with. That frontier mentality of independence. It shaped everything, their art, their life, even where they placed their business. And they didn't want help from banks or even family. They wanted the independence to pursue their passion, their art, and their business choices on their own terms. And indeed they did. They started out as struggling artists, like all do. Soon they were doing shows around the country. But even that wore on them.

They wanted to go back home and stick to their art. No signs. No advertising. Just a great product if you've never seen or owned any McCarty's Pottery.

Well, check out their website and you soon will. When we come back, more of the story of McCarty's Pottery. A legend here in Mississippi where we broadcast from. A local story. A local American dream story. Here on Our American Story.

Nissan's electric vehicles run on a special electricity, not the electricity that turns on light bulbs or runs through your outlets. Think about it. What's that rush that gets you excited and creative sparks fly? I'm talking that spine tingling goosebumps feeling that electrifies your body and soul. But really is pushing new ideas forward and being fearless, believing that you can achieve anything you set your mind to. Even though it may be uneasy, the journey ahead will produce great results.

And that's the most thrilling ride, empowering yourself to embrace any new adventure that comes your way. And you can get that same electrifying feeling when driving a Nissan. Nissan is ever evolving and changing the game through electric vehicle innovation because the electricity their cars generate not only moves engines, but it also moves the emotions of those who drive them.

To learn more about Nissan's electric vehicle lineup, visit www.NissanUSA.com. I'm Jonathan Strickland, host of the podcast, Tech Stuff. I sat down with Sunun Shahani of Surf Air Mobility, which recently went public. We talked about flying in electric planes and regional air mobility. The future of travel doesn't have to include crowded airports, cramped seats, or long road trips.

It can be as simple as using an app to book a short-range flight on an electric plane. Learn more on Tech Stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. For each person living with myasthenia gravis, or MG, their journey with this rare neuromuscular condition is unique. That's why Untold Stories Life with myasthenia gravis, a new podcast from iHeartRadio in partnership with Argenix, is exploring the extraordinary challenges and personal triumphs of underserved communities living with MG. Host Martine Hackett will share powerful perspectives from people living with the debilitating muscle weakness and fatigue caused by this rare disorder. Each episode will uncover the reality of life with myasthenia gravis. From early signs and symptoms to obtaining an accurate diagnosis and finding care, every person with MG has a story to tell. And by featuring these real-life experiences, this podcast hopes to inspire the MG community, educate others about this rare condition, and let those living with it know that they are not alone.

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Subscription auto renews. And we're back with our American stories and the story of the world renowned McCarty's Pottery that comes from right here in the state of Mississippi, where we broadcast. They have their shop in Marigold in the Mississippi Delta. We broadcast from Oxford, Faulkner country, some of the great writers in the world, Ole Miss country about an hour south, due south from Memphis, a beautiful town.

Come and visit sometime. Let's pick up now with the story of McCarty's Pottery as told by Stephen Smith. So open the studio in 54, struggled in the 1960s.

Like I said, they didn't have a lot in the way of customers. And then in the 1970s, it really started to take off as people became accustomed to it and wanted it and started to come more often. And what's been amazing over the years is how the art of Uncle Ian and pup has in some ways transcended art itself and become part of the culture of the state of Mississippi. This probably would have been around 1999 2000 right in there, a group of ladies walked in the studio. And it was pretty clear from the beginning that this was a family. This was the great grandmother, the grandmother, the mom, and then the great grandchild. And I talked to the ladies a bit and they told me that they had come to the studio for the great grandchild to pick out her first piece of McCarty's. She was probably about six or seven. So she did.

She selected the piece that she wanted. And then I got Uncle Lee and he came out and visited with them. And then of course, Uncle Lee always had this wonderful tradition that we continue today of giving children who come to the studio for the first time their little bluebird of happiness. And it's a little blue wren and Uncle Lee would tell the children, you put it in your south window and it will, as Uncle Lee would say, ward off evil and melancholy. And then of course, he would tell the children that was their vocabulary word of the day.

Because once you're a high school teacher, you're always a high school teacher. So Uncle Lee again visited with this group of ladies and the great grandchild. They took photographs, etc. And then later that day, I was in Aunt Pup's office visiting with her and I told her about this group of ladies coming in.

And that's when it really hit me that what they had done was so unbelievable. First, for any artist to be successful financially during the course of their lifetime is amazing in and of itself. And then for your work to not only be appreciated for its artistic value, the aesthetic value, but to have people take your art and incorporate it into their lives as part of a family tradition is really the ultimate compliment for any artist.

And that's what I told Aunt Pup. I said, you know, you've done something that's absolutely amazing. Not only have you and Uncle Lee created beautiful art and been successful at it financially, but you have now in a way transcended the art and become part of a culture and a tradition. And it has been absolutely wonderful and humbling to see how many people have taken our work and incorporated it into their lives.

And I mean their lives in a total sense. There are people who come to the studio and buy baptism gifts. There are people who will come, they'll purchase a chalice to be used in their wedding ceremony.

Any number of different special gifts for anniversaries and birthdays, but then also even urns to be buried in. And that just utterly amazes me. And it's such a wonderful tribute to the work of Uncle Lee and Aunt Pup and my brother that people would want as their final resting place to have a McCarty's urn. It also comes back to something that was asked of Uncle Lee many, many years ago. A reporter who is not from the South asked Uncle Lee, what makes McCarty's unique? And Uncle Lee gave the reporter a non-artistic answer, which surprised the reporter. I'm sure the reporter anticipated Uncle Lee saying something along the lines of, well, our pieces have our trademark Mississippi River on them. And that distinguishes them from other potters.

Or our glazes are all our own formulas. And that makes it unique. But that's not what Uncle Lee said. What Uncle Lee said was such a typical Mississippi response. He said that what makes McCarty's unique is that it reminds people of home, a sense of place. And I've always loved that, that phrase, a sense of place.

And Uncle Lee was absolutely right. There's something unique with Mississippians. There is something about our native soil that brings us back. There was an elderly gentleman in the studio a few years ago, and I asked him, I said, well, where are you from, sir? He said, well, I'm from Macomb, but I live in New Orleans. I said, oh, OK. Well, I love New Orleans. How many years have you been in New Orleans? And I thought he would say two or three.

He said, well, I've been in New Orleans about 68 years. But that's a great example of that connection that we have with our state, that there is a certain draw that we have here, a certain, as Uncle Lee would say, connectivity that we have with our state, with our environment and nature. And it's all those connections that created McCarty's. If Uncle Lee and Aunt Pump had never met, they both could have been talented artists, but they never would have created McCarty's on their own.

It took the two of them together to have that love, that passion to create McCarty's. When you think about a legacy, it is, of course, what you leave behind. Well, naturally, of course, they left their beautiful art behind.

No doubt about that. They also left this wonderful tradition that my brother as a potter continues on today. He had actually learned pottery under Uncle Lee and Aunt Pump as a child. And we were very blessed that Uncle Lee lived till 2015, Aunt Pump till 2009. And then the other part of their legacy would be one of inspiration and an inspiration not just to young artists, but to any young person out there. Uncle Lee and Aunt Pump certainly proved that you could pursue your dreams anywhere.

I think a great example of that is in the introduction to John Miller's book on McCarty's. Maudie Schuyler-Clay, she's a wonderful photographer here in Mississippi, she wrote the introduction to the book. Maudie knew Uncle Lee and Aunt Pump as a child. She studied photography, went off and lived in New York City. When her mother became ill, Maudie returned to Sumner, Mississippi to care for her mother. After her mother passed away, Maudie naturally thought about returning to New York, but Maudie stayed because of Uncle Lee and Aunt Pump.

And in the introduction to the book, Maudie wrote the following and I'll quote Maudie here. As a budding photographer with few Mississippi artistic role models, I was sustained by their friendship, promotion and support. The living example they provided that artists could survive and yes, even thrive in tiny rural towns in the middle of nowhere was enlightening. They had done what they wanted to do and they had done it right here in the very place I felt I was destined to return to.

Uncle Lee and Aunt Pump took nothing and created something. They took a dilapidated old mule barn that had been abandoned and they created a beautiful art studio where they've made thousands of pieces over the last 65 years that we've been in business that people have taken home and cherished and made part of their lives. They took dilapidated, abandoned mule pasture and created beautiful gardens. And in 2011, the Greenville Garden Club came, photographed everything, documented everything and then submitted it to the Smithsonian Institution. And then in 2012, we were inducted into the Smithsonian's Archives of American Gardens, which for a town of 527 people, that ain't bad.

You know, it's amazing. We're part of the Smithsonian. So, when you look at it, you can say their legacy is that they took nothing and created something and left this world a better place. And that, I think, is a legacy that we could all aspire to.

And of course, my brother and I are very honored to continue that legacy on with that same tradition here in Little Marigold, Mississippi. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Madison Derricott. And a special thanks to Stephen Smith for sharing this story of McCarty's Pottery.

This couple took nothing and created something. Their story is more than just a great art story, a business story. It's an American Dreamer story. And by the way, no different than the Steinway family's story. Big city, pianos, artists, business people and a family legacy we all know. And here are the McCarty's in Little Marigold, in the Deep South, pursuing the same dream.

The story of McCarty's Pottery. The story of every American Dreamer. Here on Our American Stories.

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