OCEAN SPRINGS, Miss.—For Marjorie Ashley, the joy of Christmas morning didn’t just come once a year—it came every time her father Peter Anderson opened the massive oil-fired kiln in his workshop. As a child who grew up in the quaint town of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, during the 1940s, she remembers teeming with excitement alongside her siblings as they waited in anticipation for her father to reveal his latest pottery creations.
“I sometimes wish that the whole world could live the life that I’ve had on this property,” Marjorie said.
As the daughter of master potter Peter Anderson, Marjorie grew up as part of a legendary artistic lineage that has produced globally renowned pottery and art for nearly a century. Today, she manages the family business alongside her daughter Beth Ashley.
An Artistic Dynasty
Marjorie’s father Peter Anderson founded Shearwater Pottery in 1928 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, as its primary potter and developed all of the shapes and glazes the family continues to use in the workshop today.
Shortly afterward, his two brothers Walter Anderson and James McConnell (Mac) Anderson joined the family business as painters. They founded what the Anderson family calls “the annex.” Here, they created molds for Shearwater Pottery’s underglaze castware, which is a hand-painted work that is decorated in the annex.
For decades, Peter and his brothers dug for all their own clay locally in the Vancleave area and other spots across the Gulf Coast, Marjorie said. Today, the family mixes a formula to produce the clay they use in their pottery.
Members of the Anderson family still create all of the artwork sold at Shearwater Pottery today, Marjorie explained, carrying on the legacy her father and uncles started nearly 100 years ago.
Nine artists currently work together to produce art for Shearwater Pottery, with the potters working in the workshop and decorators working in the annex.
The Workshop
In 1966, Peter Anderson’s son James (Jim) Anderson, joined his father as a potter and started putting his own throwware in the showroom. Today, he is Shearwater Pottery’s main potter along with his son, who is also named Peter.
Jim said he continues to make pottery to honor his father and carry on family traditions. Although he’s made many pots during his years as an artist, he said he’s never been able to match the impressive speed with which his father was able to craft pottery.
“I like to make pottery as near as I can to what my father did, (but) he was much more skilled,” Jim said.
Jim said he particularly enjoys creating pottery when he’s making a piece that comes easy to him.
“I can work and think at the same time, let my mind wander,” he said.
Growing up, many people told Jim that his family’s pottery was some of the “best pottery in the world,” and he saw people from all over come to visit Shearwater Pottery’s showroom. Now, he’s passing down the family’s pottery legacy to his own son, who carries the name of the business’ founder.
For years, Jim taught high-commitment classes for dedicated students interested in learning how to throw pottery. His son Peter has now taken over that role.
Finding a spot in one of Peter’s classes isn’t particularly easy, Beth said, and it typically requires a competitive interview process and a six-month commitment. At present, however, some spots are available. Prospective students may inquire by using the contact information listed on Shearwater Pottery’s website.
“They fill up pretty quickly,” she said. “Once somebody gets in, they don’t let go very easily.”
Peter also spends his days in the family’s pottery workshop creating pieces and collaborating with his father. He said his path to becoming a potter felt “natural” because he grew up surrounded by art. For Peter, refusing to compromise on shape and beauty while also focusing on functionality is a defining aspect that makes the art created at Shearwater Pottery particularly special.
As part of a family that lives and works together on the same property, Peter said to some extent he feels an unconscious collaboration occurs between artists.
“When we make something on the wheel, we are not making it thinking, ‘Somebody might decorate this,’” he said.
Rather, he said it’s more common for someone working in the annex to see a piece that’s produced and recognize it as a good shape to put designs on.
The Annex
As the daughter of Mac Anderson, Adele Lawton said she grew up in “a magical place.”
As a young girl she remembers running down the windy, dirt road lined with tall hickory and pine trees that starts from the main streets of Ocean Springs and goes all the way back into the woods of her family’s property to the studio and workshop of Shearwater Pottery.
“In the springtime, going down the road, there would be azalea bushes on both sides, and mountain-laurel and dogwoods and wisteria coming down out of the oak trees,” Adele said. “I would just run down the road because it smelled so good.”
Adele has continued her father’s craft and now works as an artist in Shearwater Pottery’s annex where she paints and decorates figurines and other pottery.
Her father Mac and uncle Walter founded the annex of Shearwater Pottery in the 1930s. There, they created figurines and decorated pottery.
To create a slip-cast figurine, Beth said, Adele and the other artists who work in the annex pour a pitcher of “slip,” also known as liquid clay, into a mold. Then, the plaster takes out the water. When it gets to the proper thickness, they pour out the excess and let the mold dry. When the piece is ready to be removed from the mold, artists trim the piece.
Adele’s father and uncles mentored her and taught her the family’s art traditions from a young age. She recalls she and the other children who grew up on the family’s property would get a nickel if they could properly trim a piece of pottery without breaking it.
“Most of the time we wound up breaking it,” Adele said with a chuckle.
After trimming a piece, the artist then paints it, fires it in the kiln, glazes it and fires it again before it’s ready for the showroom.
One of Adele’s favorite memories growing up was when her uncle Peter would give all the kids a little piece of clay that they could bring to the annex where her father worked, and they would be allowed to make something out of it.
Adele’s mother kept every single piece of artwork the kids ever made, and the whole house was filled with art, most of it from her father Mac. From the furniture he constructed himself to murals on the walls, Mac adorned every inch of his family’s home with art. Adele said even the side of the stove was painted with a scene of her mother and sister dancing.
A Century of Resilience
In August 2005, Beth Ashley had moved away from her family’s property in Ocean Springs and was working in Nashville when Hurricane Katrina hit the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
The near-total destruction of her family’s home and business in the wake of Hurricane Katrina woke Beth up to how much it meant to her, so she made the decision to come back home to Ocean Springs. Adele said they lost a lot in Katrina, but she and Beth were able to recover some of the family’s art with the help of some friends.
“(We) spent three months cleaning up and going through the different mounds of Hurricane Katrina debris, salvaging art and salvaging our business,” Beth said.
“Some things got stuck back together, and some things didn’t,” Adele added.
This wasn’t the first or last time the family’s business struggled, Beth said. As a business that opened in 1928, Shearwater Pottery spent its early years of operation facing financial hardship during the Great Depression. Since then, it’s survived financial crises that have forced many small businesses across the country to close down—-WWII, the Great Recession, Hurricane Katrina and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic.
Beth started working in the workshop as a teenager. The family business has always meant a lot to her, she said, especially because of her close relationship with her grandfather. In her current role as business manager, she said she hopes to continue keeping her grandfather’s vision alive.
“You feel it in your bones,” Beth said. “Peter was a wonderful grandfather. He did so many things, so it means a great deal to me.”
Carrying on the Family Business
Beth Ashley said she thinks the family business remains popular today because people are “longing for simplicity” and Shearwater Pottery is a timeless place.
“They come down the road, and they’re kind of shocked at the simplicity,” Beth said. “You come in the door, and we’re still using a handwritten accountant book, and the raccoons are playing in the backyard.”
Her grandfather Peter Anderson had a pile outside the workshop where he would discard pottery he didn’t feel was fit to sell in the showroom. She said this pile was a core memory for children who visited the Anderson family business on school tours, with many still remaining loyal customers today.
“Some of them would raid the trash pile where Papa would throw out things he didn’t deem worthy to sell in the showroom,” Beth said. “They have memories of that—-for a lot of people, it means a lot.”
Even outside the realm of pottery, members of the family have continued the tradition of being artists in other mediums.
“My grandmother, she believed that everybody had a gift,” Marjorie said.
Famous for his appearance on Ink Master, an American reality series featuring tattoo artists from around the world who compete for a cash prize, Walter Anderson’s grandson Matt Stelby has also made a name for himself as a nationally recognized tattoo artist who owns and operates Twisted Anchor Tattoo in Ocean Springs.
From his start working as an artist alongside his brothers at Shearwater Pottery to his masterpieces later in life, Walter himself left behind an artistic footprint as a renowned expressionist painter whose work captured the Gulf Coast through the use of bright colors and vivid landscapes. To make Walter’s artwork more accessible for locals to own, the Anderson family operates Realizations: The Walter Anderson Shop, located inside the historic train depot building at 1000 B Washington Avenue in Ocean Springs.
“People more and more … know that this might be somewhat of a treasure,” Marjorie said about the Anderson family business.
The showroom and gift shop of Shearwater Pottery (102 Shearwater Drive, Ocean Springs) is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. The workshop production area is viewable on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Learn more about the Anderson family legacy at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art (501 Washington Ave.) in Ocean Springs, open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
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