Sweezy, 88, revived Jugtown

Nancy Sweezy, who was responsible for reviving pottery in North Carolina and making it popular across the country, died Saturday in Cambridge, Mass.

She was 88.

Sweezy came to North Carolina in 1968 to run Jugtown Pottery. During her 13-year tenure, she created an apprenticeship program that helped revive the traditional craft of pottery locally and nationally.

The Seagrove pottery community went from seven potteries when she arrived to 115 today.

Sweezy's effect on North Carolina's pottery community is "profound and very much felt to this day," said George Holt, director of the N.C. Museum of Art's performing arts and film programs. Holt helped organize an exhibition in 2005, "The Potter's Eye," of which Sweezy was the co-curator.

In 2006, Sweezy received the nation's highest honor for folk and traditional arts: She was one of 11 master artists named as National Heritage Fellowship award winners by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Sweezy had a circuitous route to Seagrove. She was born Oct. 14, 1921. She attended Boston's Museum School of Fine Arts. During World War II, she worked for a government agency that was the precursor to the CIA. As part of that job, she entered Hitler's bunker shortly after his suicide, according to her paid obituary.

While in Germany, she met her husband, Paul Sweezy, a Harvard economist who later became known as "the dean of the American Marxists." The couple divorced in 1960, and Sweezy became involved with Club 47, a Cambridge music venue that was key in the folk music revival during that decade.

Meanwhile, Jugtown Pottery was at loose ends. The original owners, Juliana and Jacques Busbee, were Raleigh artists who developed the pottery as a continuing source for their store in Manhattan. The Busbees helped create a market for North Carolina pottery among New York collectors. But by 1962, the Busbees and their successor, John Mare, had died. Mare's estate was looking for a buyer who would carry on the pottery's traditions.

Sweezy, also a potter, was then the director of the nonprofit group Country Roads, which sought to buy the pottery.

"Nancy convinced them she was the right person," said Vernon Owens, a potter at Jugtown at the time and now the pottery's owner. Before Sweezy came, Vernon Owens' wife, Pam, said, "there was a good chance it wouldn't survive."

They say Sweezy had business sense. She raised and borrowed money and revived the business.

She also developed a line of lead-free glazes for the pottery.

Sweezy went on to write two books, "Raised in Clay," which was published by Smithsonian Press, and "Armenian Folk Arts, Culture and Identity."

Sweezy is survived by a son, Samuel Sweezy of Arlington, Mass; daughters Martha Sweezy of Cambridge, Mass., and Lybess Sweezy of New York; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.