Southern Appalachian Digital Collections

Western Carolina University (20) View all

Pottery: pipe

  • wcu_craft_revival-6569.jpg
  • This undated photograph by an unknown photographer is of blackware pottery made by Louise Bigmeat Maney (1932-2001). The form is known as a seven-sided peace pipe. Louise Bigmeat was raised on Wrights Creek in the Painttown community of Cherokee, North Carolina. A member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, she was a third-generation potter. While she was a young child, she and her two sisters began making pottery with their mother, Charlotte Welch Bigmeat (1887-1959). Louise Bigmeat married John Henry Maney and, together, they established Bigmeat House of Pottery. In 1979, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board and Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual organized an exhibiton of pottery by the Bigmeat sisters; in 1998, Louise Bigmeat Maney received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award. While their work is finished using methods traditional to the Cherokee, their pottery was shaped on the potters wheel. This vase is incised with a bark pattern.