[Scmusenet] Catawba Indian Pottery Lecture and Display at Pickens County Museum

[Allen Coleman]

Catawba Indian Pottery Lecture and Display at Pickens County Museum

Saturday, November 8

 

     The public is invited to this free program on Saturday, November 8,
2008, 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Well known authority and author on Catawba
Pottery, Thomas J. Blumer, Ph.D., from Lancaster, South Carolina, will
present a lecture and slide presentation on "Catawba Indian Pottery and
its Influence on Cherokee Pottery". 

 

     To further enhance this presentation, a selected exhibit of
exquisite Catawba Pottery will be on display in the LaVonne Nalley Piper
Auditorium for the month of November. This exhibit can be enjoyed during
normal museum business hours - don't miss it.

 

     The Catawba Nation, located 8 miles east of Rock Hill, South
Carolina, has great historical and cultural importance. Whoever looks at
a Catawba vessel in a museum and sees its gentle reds, browns, black and
gray tones has just experienced a miracle of survival. By all reasonable
standards, Catawba pottery should not be made today. Passed on within
the Nation, the pottery tradition has survived contact with Europeans,
wars, centuries of economic and cultural stress and contact with modern
technology. Catawba pottery tradition endures as a tribal possession and
remains one of the purest art forms of its kind.

 

   Thomas J. Blumer, author of the book "The Catawba Indian Nation of
the Carolinas", was fascinated with Indian Culture by the age of 15. He
studied Chichen Itza for years and later moved on to the study of Plains
Indians. In 1956, he joined the United States Navy and as luck would
have it, attended a school in Oklahoma. All of his Navel bases were
located in Dixie and here Thomas says he became a "Born Again Southerner
instantly". Upon discharge he met a lovely Indian girl; they married and
had four children. In three years he obtained both a BA and an MA in
English and became a teacher in Virginia. In 1972 Thomas left Virginia
for the University of South Carolina and received his Ph.D. Here he
discovered the Catawba in the person of master potter Doris Blue and the
Catawba became his extended family. Today, Dr. Blumer's pottery
collection contains well over 1,000 vessels and is in the control of the
Catawba Valley Land Trust in Lancaster. The papers which he collected
from 1970 to the present are in the Thomas J. Blumer Catawba Archives in
the Medlin Library at the University of South Carolina, Lancaster. In
1993, he shifted over to serve the Catawba Indian Nation as their
official tribal historian. As an experienced lecturer, Thomas Blumer
shows his love of pottery and history which he enjoys sharing with
audiences across the country.

 

   This program is part of the museum's continuing effort to provide a
variety of entertaining and educational programming for the community
and is funded in part by a donation from Reliable Automatic Sprinkler
Co., Inc. The Pickens County Museum of Art & History is funded in part
by Pickens County, members and friends of the museum and a grant from
the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the
National Endowment for the Arts.

 

   The Pickens County Museum of Art & History is located at 307 Johnson
Street in Pickens. Museum hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday
9a-5p, Thursday 9a-7:30p, and Saturday 9a-4:30p.  For additional
information call 864.898.5963.

 

 

 

 

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