McCartys Pottery Is a Mississippi Mainstay

When a journalist asked the late Lee McCarty what made people love his and his wife’s pottery, McCartys Pottery, he gave a surprising answer. It wasn’t that the pottery is made from Mississippi clay, or its squiggly line trademark representing the Mississippi River, or that the glazes are all formulas developed by Lee.

“He said, ‘What makes McCartys unique is that it reminds people of home; a sense of place,’” says Stephen Smith, Lee’s godson and co-owner of McCartys Pottery. “I’ve always loved that. And Uncle Lee was actually right. There is a connection between McCartys, the Mississippi Delta, the state of Mississippi and the river – it’s all connected together, and it reminds people of home. And that’s what draws people to it.”

You know a McCartys piece when you see it by its nutmeg brown, cobalt blue and jade coloring. Their collection of vases, candelabras, plates and figurines has reminded generations of home and of Mississippi. Customers still purchase wedding chalices or guardian angels to celebrate a baptism.

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Passing the Torch

Today, Stephen and his brother, Jamie, are at the helm of the business, taking over for their godparents who have passed on. Both had plans to leave behind their tiny town of Merigold and carry on their careers in technology and law, but the pottery lured them home in 1998.

“I told my brother, ‘When I come home, we’ll see if we can prove Thomas Wolfe wrong that you can in fact go home again,’” Stephen says.

The Smith family arrived in the small town of Merigold in the 1880s, decades before the town was even incorporated. His great-aunt was best friends with Lee’s mother, and the families were intertwined not by blood, but love. The Smith boys grew up with the McCartys as their second set of parents, eating Neapolitan ice cream and swimming in their pool on Saturdays.

History of McCartys Pottery

Pup, Lee’s wife, was from outside of Ethel in Mississippi hill country, and Lee grew up in Merigold. The two met at Delta State University, dated through Lee’s stateside service during World War II, and married in 1946. Lee earned a degree in education from Ole Miss and taught high school chemistry. It was in Oxford that the couple was introduced to pottery.

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Pup signed up for a pottery course and discovered she was in the same class as the Ole Miss football team. She invited her husband to join, and the road to McCartys Pottery was paved. The couple moved a kiln into their garage, and a student of Lee’s said her father’s house had plenty of clay they could use; her father was William Faulkner, and the couple’s early pieces were made from clay dug from “Mr. Bill’s” property at Rowan Oak. But Merigold was calling out to Lee, and the two moved to his hometown in 1953.

They decided to turn their pottery hobby into a business, so the McCartys took over the Smiths’ family barn and converted the first floor into the workshop and store and the hayloft into their home. To escape the stifling Mississippi summers, they would open their French doors to let in any breeze and move their mattress close by. In 1954, McCartys Pottery opened its doors – no sign, no advertising.

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“To this day, there’s no sign outside,” Stephen says. “Uncle Lee and Aunt Pup believed if you create something of quality, you do not need to advertise. People will find you. Of course, that violates every rule of business, but they were artists.”

Evolving Offering at McCartys Pottery

Over the years, McCartys expanded to include gardens, a terrace and a pool. In 1991, they opened McCartys Gallery Restaurant. The pottery side of the business had a slow start.

So slow, in fact, that Stephen remembers being warned he would need to get out of the pool if any customers came through – but he never actually had to do so. But today, the family-run business is a Mississippi mainstay spread through word of mouth. Customers still receive their wares wrapped in craft paper (back in the day it was newspaper) and placed in a brown paper bag.

The couple’s garden is included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens, their work is included in the Mississippi Museum of Art’s permanent collection, they received the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996 from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, and in 2015, Lee was inducted into the Ole Miss Hall of Fame. Pup died in 2009 and Lee followed in 2015, a few months after his induction.

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“Their career started at the university in Oxford and to have the recognition at the very end was a neat sort of bookend,” Stephen says. “They both were natural artists, they both had wonderful talents, but you would not have McCartys Pottery without both of them together.”