COLE NORTH CAROLINA ART POTTERY,NELL COLE GRAVES VASE

COLE NORTH CAROLINA ART POTTERY,NELL COLE GRAVES VASE (image 3/[null, null, null, null])

COLE NORTH CAROLINA ART POTTERY,NELL COLE GRAVES VASE (image 4/[null, null, null, null])

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Up for auction is a J.B. Cole Pottery of Seagrove, North Carolina (1922 to late 1990's), Flower frog Style, Strawberry Planter Vase with a Sky Blue Glaze, Circa 1950's in Mint Condition and Hand Turned by Nell Cole Graves. This is a beautiful strawberry planter which was done more in the style of a flower frog vase and it measures about 3 1/4 inches tall and it rests on a base of about 2 inches in diameter. This would be considered a 4 1/2 inch diameter vase and across the top opening it measures 1 5/16 inches. The actual opening at the top is 1 inch in diameter along with the 4 slit openings measuring about 1 3/4 inches by 3/8 inches and it weighs 10 ounces. This piece has absolutely no chips or cracks of any kind and t is only a small amount of glaze crazing to be seen in a few areas. The glaze for this piece ended up covering the vase a bit on the thin side, so you can also see the reddish-brown clay showing around the openings as well as on some sides of the vase. This can happen during the firing because the glaze thins out and doesn't cover these areas well enough to see it. The reddish-brown areas on the edges still become glossy because t is still a very thin amount of the glaze covering the edges, but it's so thin only the clay color shows up. This strawberry planter has all the earmarks of a J.B. Cole Pottery piece and also appears to have been hand turned by master potter Nell Cole Graves. She was the daughter of J.B. Cole and she is known for her delicate and precision hand turning of small wares like this example. This is not a signed piece, so I can not guarantee 100% that she was the turner, but when you study the viewing photos you will see how delicately and precisely this piece was thrown along with its thin walls and these characteristics are all trademarks of her work. You may also be able to find other examples of her wares to compare this piece to and you will see the similarities. The glaze is also a known J.B. Cole color and the bottom shows all the details you would find from a Cole piece dating from the 1940's and after. The color of the clay is correct for Seagrove and the local clay would vary in shade from dark to light in its reddish to reddish brown color and as you can see the clay used for this piece is on the darker side. After J.B. Cole died in 1942, Waymon Cole his son and sister Nell Cole Graves took over the pottery and soon after purchased a belt sander. The purpose of the sander was to sand away uneven areas of clay or glaze from the bottom of piece so it would sit level. You can see on the bottom of this vase w it was sanded and you can also barely see 2 of 3 stilt marks which came from the original firing of the piece. At some point and time, but still fairly early in the potteries history they began using a wire tripod stilt to rest the wares on during the kiln firing. The wares would sit on 3 tips of this wire stand and this would leave behind 3 small marks in a triangular formation on the bottom. Once the piece was removed from the kiln it would be sanded level and sometimes the sanding would remove one or even all stilt marks. That is the case with this vase with only 2 of the marks still barely visible. Nell Cole Graves was the first woman North Carolina Art Potter that actually turned wares on a potters wheel and she was taught how at an early age. Soon the male turners became aware that the women could handle the smaller wares much easier because of their small hands and this became Nell's specialty. She became so skilled in her trade that she was in awe of many of her co-potters for the thin walls she could achieve along with perfection of the forms she turned. I also want to state that she did make some rather large vessels at times just to prove to the boys she could make them too. She ended up marrying one of her fathers employed turners, Philmore Graves and of course this explains her last name. She continued to run the J.B Cole Pottery into the 1990's not long before she passed away in 1998, but she also did the work ... read more

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