Jerry Brown carries forward an unbroken tradition of Southern stoneware pottery that has been in his family for nine generations. Adolphus Brown, Jerry's great grandfather, operated a pottery shop in the 1920's here in Cleveland, GA. A brother of his great grandfather worked for "Daddy Bill" Dorsey and Cheever Meaders at this time, where they were paid two cents a gallon for turning ware. In the early 1930's his father, Horace "Jug" Brown, moved to Lamar County, Alabama, a region rich in clay for pottery making and opened a pottery shop in 1941. Jerry and his brother were put to work in their father's shop before they were old enough to go to school. Jerry was 22 when his father turned the shop over to his sons.

Mixing the clay at the Pug Mill
Jerry and and wife, Sandra, run a small scale family operation. He still uses a mule to power his clay mill. He continues to use the old glazes - Albany slip, Bristol and ash plus producing many of the old traditional shapes, including churns, pitchers and the face jugs that the Brown family has been making since the turn of the century. His work is a testimony to the vitality and continuity of the Southern pottery tradition