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Mildred Meaders
White County has lost another giant in the folk pottery world.
Mildred Meaders passed away August 10.
Mildred worked with her husband John Rufus Meaders at their home shop in Mossy Creek, White County, decorating the pottery he created, but came into her own as a potter after he died in 1999.
“She never turned while he was alive,” said her daughter Annette Meaders Boswell.
John Rufus Meaders grew up in the business, the son of Cheever and brother to Wylie, Lanier, and Nub.
Emory Jones, himself the grandson of Wylie, lived next door to Mildred and John when he was a child. He said John held jobs other than pottery for many years. Mildred spent her time raising her three daughters, Annette, Mary and Joyce, and gardening.
“He was not making pottery in 1979 when I left home,” Boswell said. But, she added, when John began making pottery, Mildred decorated it with grapes or other designs.
“She never really turned anything until he died,” Boswell said. “After he passed, she decided she'd just get out there and try her hand. She'd watched him. I think when you live in it most of your adult life, it's jut something you do.
“She enjoyed doing the shows and being with other potters and the customers. She took great pride in her pottery, and was proud when someone else saw the value of it.”
Jones said that Mildred sometimes worked at the shop at the old Meaders' home place.
“People would drive up and she would come out and sell them pottery,” he added. “She was part of a team of well-known women potters that included Flossie, Jessie and Ruby Meaders.”
Her husband John created bowls with a chicken head on one side and the tail on the other, he said.
“Hers were like that, but she had a distinct style with them,” he added. “You could always tell she had made them. (John) made face jugs, and she did too, but hers were smaller.”
John A. Burrison, a Georgia State University professor who specializes in folk culture and is author of, among others, Brothers in Clay: The Story of Georgia Folk Pottery and From Mud to Jug: The Folk Potters and Pottery of Northeast Georgia, said he did not know Mildred well, but he knew of her influence.
He noted that she created fine chicken-shaped bowls and colorful jars, decorated in the style of her mother-in-law, Arie Meaders.
“Mildred was one of a small, elite group of women folk potters of her generation in what was (and to some extent still is) a male-dominated craft tradition,” he said.
Burrison is the curator of the Northeast Georgia Folk Pottery Museum at the Sautee Nacoochee Center. Meghan Gerig, museum director, said that Mildred was featured in a recent exhibit titled, “The Men Won't Tell Us Anything.”
“It was about women potters from the first half of the 20th century,” Gerig said. The current exhibit features women folk potters born after 1950, and Mildred was a teacher and mentor to many of them. “Her influence amongst women potters is especially clear,” she said.
See page 3A of the White County News for funeral and family information.