The potter's hands were wide with short, thick fingers, gnarled and cracked from a lifetime of work. Small burn scars criss-crossed the tough skin on the palms from feeding wood into the kiln. Dried clay was wedged beneath the ragged fingernails. Specks of it dotted the potter's apron and stuck like gray flies to his muscular forearms.

He reached under the cloth and drew out a ball of brown clay, looking it over for any signs of obvious impurities. He placed it on the scale and removed a few chunks from the ball until the scale read five pounds. He lumped the leftovers together and returned them to their shelter to wait under the wet cloth.

Slapping the ball on his wheel so that it would hold fast and create the right amount of suction, he dipped his fingers in a pail of cloudy water and drizzled it over the expectant clay. He began pumping the foot pedal on the wheel and as it spun around, he moistened the clay until it became malleable beneath his hands.

As the potter centered the bulk, it lurched a bit, like a drunk, and then rose upwards like a giraffe craning its neck to reach a higher branch. The wheel hummed softly as the potter worked under the light of a single bulb with the sounds of bluegrass music on the radio.

The clay was alive. Warm below his arms, it moved, stretched, and twisted. He cupped his fingers around its body, forcing the ripples to grow upward in a steady, curving shape. He pressed more firmly at the base, and hips seemed to grow as the weight of the clay settled onto itself. Around the rim, the potter pinched with one hand and smoothed the swelling sides with the other. Then, he let the pace of the wheel slow as he curled his hand around the neck of clay, pushing it upward in a gentle choking motion until it was a symmetrical spout, obedient to his will.

With a knife, he cut off the extra piece of neck and smoothed the insides of the opening. He stepped back and examined the piece, looking at the base, the round sides, and back up to the top where the centered spout emerged in perfect lines.

Satisfied, he slid a piece of wire beneath the jug and moved it gingerly onto a stone slab where it would dry. This one would not get a face. It was too late in the evening and the potter was tired. He had made enough for one day.

As he switched off the radio, he noticed the little lump of leftover clay peeking out from beneath the damp cloth. A new wedge awaited him tomorrow, and he didn't really want to unwrap the whole thing just to save this small bit. Still, he hated to waste a piece of clay. He paused, picked it up, held it, thinking.

His hands moved over it, hesitating. They weren't sure what they were supposed to do. Without the wheel, things were uncertain. Pieces could become anything, imperfect, different.

The potter smoothed the lump into a rounded body, then pushed up a thick neck with one hand and widened the head with the other. He pinched out two long, rounded ears, and pulled forward a small nose and cheeks. Dipping his hands into the water, He smoothed the body and pushed out a swollen hump to become the back and the hind leg, then pulled out two, long, identical front legs from the clay below the head. With a wooden carving stick, he traced an upright cottontail on the base of the back leg, drew paws into the little feet, and made a triangular nose, winking eyes, a grinning mouth, and six whiskers. Lastly, he carved his initials and a number onto the base.

The potter smiled, flicking away any flecks of clay from around the last piece of work he would do that night. He hid it far back behind the other taller pieces where it could remain a surprise until the moment was right.

The rabbit smiled back at him, sharing his secret among the crocks and churns, the pitchers and bowls, and the face jugs with their rows of crooked teeth. It waited for the time when the potter's hands would reach out with his brush and glaze its naked body into a cobalt the color of the deep sea. The clay was patient. It had waited hundreds of years to be formed; it could wait a little longer to be burned blue by the kiln fire.

It waited. But the gentle hands of its creator would never come again.

Chapter 1.

“It was quick, it was ruthless, it was in-your-face collecting…Did people really go this crazy over pottery?”

Andrew Glasgow, from Catawba Clay: Contemporary Southern Face Jug Makers

“Time to get up!”

The call seeped into the dark bedroom and murmured around antique woven coverlets and a turn-of-the-century walnut blanket chest. It stared at the Dutch girl with the metal bucket in her oil painting of snow, reflected the sheen on the porcelain curls of a pair Staffordshire dogs, and tickled the ecru page corners on a stack of leather-bound books. Finding no response, it accepted defeat and melted into the open mouth of a large cherry corner cupboard filled with row upon row of white-glazed pottery glowing with life in the weak, first stripes of dawn light.

“MADAM!” This call was loud enough to stir the silence of the room and awaken the sleeping woman. Her arm jerked outward as she was shocked so abruptly into wakefulness. The rotund gray tabby lying in a warm circle beside her burrowed a set of sharp claws into the woman's hand as punishment for daring to move a body part.

The door was flung open without ceremony and a rectangle of light from the kitchen burst into the room in the room like an uninvited guest.

“Who do you have in there?” Molly's mother asked from the doorframe, and without waiting for an answer, asked the groggy feline. “Sophie, would you like some milk?”

The plump tabby lethargically turned a pair of peridot-green eyes toward the voice and issued a small, but commanding chirp of assent. Molly, whose nickname was “Madam” in her mother's house, turned over and buried her head beneath the pillow.

In the kitchen, her mother sang perky little ditties to her seven felines, loudly cracked open cans and distributed dry food into bowls. Cats meowed, refrigerator and cupboard doors were opened and closed, the microwave whirred and beeped. Then her mother was back, balancing something carefully in one hand and turning on the lamp impatiently with the other.

“Four! This is insane, Ma.” Molly sat up and pushed an unruly strand of dark hair out of her face. “You are truly an evil woman,” she mumbled.

“Get up. Sophie wants her milk and she doesn't like anyone on the bed when she's eating.”

Molly looked at the porcelain doll-sized teacup and saucer decorated with tiny sprays of pink roses and 14 karat gold accents that her mother held with as much disdain as she could muster. Sophie glared accusingly at her in return.

“I hope you realize that I am going to be crabby all day,” Molly announced as she rubbed her half-closed eyes and shuffled off to the bathroom.

“Yes, dear. But I'm used to you,” her mother replied, unfazed. Hands on hips, she contentedly watched the tabby daintily lap at her milk. “Sophie, you're the only creature on earth I will hand-wash china for, my darling.”

Molly muttered a disgusted “Hrmphh” from within the bathroom.

*** 

It was a cool, pre-dawn morning. Molly shivered and wiped the condensation from the car windshield. Beneath fading stars, she watched as her mother loaded some rubber bins stuffed with bubble wrap into the trunk. It was hard to believe that this was the beginning of what would become another stiflingly hot June day in North Carolina .

As Molly gazed out over the empty field behind her mother's house, where the misty ropes of kudzu threatened blanket the entire spread of vegetation, a longhaired black cat entwined itself around her ankles and began to yowl for attention. Molly looked down to see that her newly dry cleaned pants were speckled with black cat hair. Clucking in irritation, she shooed the cat away and brushed at her pants. Clumps of black hair floated onto the asphalt. Chilled, Molly stood and rubbed the goose bumps on her arms and then hurriedly climbed into the driver's seat of her mother's pearl-white Lexus.

By five thirty , they were merging onto interstate 85 South, towards Seagrove, home of the southern potters. As Molly sipped her warm sweet coffee, her mother offered her a banana. Molly crossly waved it away.

“I can't eat at this hour, Ma. The truckers are the only people crazy enough to be out and they're probably getting paid much more than I am.”

“The other collectors are out here too.”

“Oh,” Molly moaned, ignoring her mother, “I wish I hadn't volunteered to cover these pottery fair things. I hate getting up when it's still dark out.”

“They're called kiln openings. And once you've been to one, you'll be hooked for life. I know you.”

“Well, it was your idea to suggest these articles to Collector's Weekly and now I'm driving instead of sleeping. My editor actually thinks a series on pottery is a great idea and he never likes anything.”

Her mother examined a minute stain on her teal cardigan sweater. “The collecting world needs to be educated about southern potters and you're just the person to do it.”

Molly had been an English teacher at an exclusive private school for eight years when the job started to wear on her. Though people assumed most teachers worked a short day and took summers off, Molly worked long days, graded papers on weekends, and spent every summer teaching extra classes in order to meet her mortgage payments. After eight years, she felt that she had no time for herself.

Whenever she did have a few moments to spare, she spent them attending auctions and browsing antique shops. Soon she was submitting articles to Collector's Weekly for extra spending money and when a full-time staff position became available, she jumped at the chance to get paid for doing what she loved most.

She typically wrote on the bigger-name antique auctions in her area, driving around Virginia , North Carolina , and South Carolina to snap pictures and to interview auctioneers and bidders. Her articles featured detailed descriptions of the items that brought in the highest prices and quotes from satisfied buyers.

After covering the auction beat for a year, she noticed that more and more southern pottery was appearing at auction and then disappearing at exorbitant prices. Knowing little about the subject, she asked her mother for a quick course on the world of southern pottery.

She had received a pile of books to read, but her mother warned her that the written word could never compete with the real thing. Molly would have to meet the potters and see them working in person to fully understand why people went wild over their ware.

Molly's mother, Clara Appleby, once owned a thriving antique shop. After a few years, she discovered that she hated being tied down to retail hours and dealing with finicky customers, so she switched her business to become a dealer in southern folk art pottery. Instead of renting and maintaining a costly shop space, she now conducted business using a simple web site and a “shop” located in the log cabin on her property. Customers could visit by appointment only. Clara's own house was filled with pottery of all shapes and sizes and she was well known as a pottery expert. Molly repeatedly teased her that she bought more to keep than to sell.

“You have to go to kiln openings to get the pottery at reasonable prices. Dealers can turn right around and double their money by selling the pieces they get at openings on the Internet the same day. Plus, some of these potters only make two batches a year. That puts a big limit on supply. You've got to grab them fresh out of the kiln,” Clara lectured animatedly.

Molly threw her mother a sideways glance. “Sounds like a scam to me. Dealers wait for those two kiln openings a year and go crazy, buying up everything the potter has, right? I mean, the potters limit the supply and the demand increases, causing normal people to get up with the chickens. Pretty clever.”

“It takes a lot of work to make this kind of pottery. We're not talking about some pansy pot or a coffee mug. These art potters may have spent ten years learning how to make something perfect come off the wheel. I can't explain it to you. You just have to see it for yourself. You'll learn to love it all–the kiln openings, the pottery festivals, outbidding someone for a piece you just have to have at auction. Trust me, it's a complete addiction! People will absolutely kill for this stuff, you'll see.”