Keeping a tradition alive

It’s a style that has been around since the 1930s, and there was a time when the hand painted Blue Ridge style dishware could be bought in dime stores and were among the cheapest dishes available.

Today, there are only a handful of people who can reproduce this style of china, and even fewer can say they were the original artists of the dishware.

Marie Garland Branham can claim both. She is still making full dish sets and selling them at her daughter’s antique store in Cave Spring.

The historic art form is being kept alive by the 94-year-old who worked for Southern Potteries, the producer of the Blue Ridge china in Erwin, Tennessee in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Branham, who still lives in Tennessee, will soon be moving to Cave Spring to make her work more available to locals.

Christa’s Antiques is the closest place to find Marie’s handiwork although according to her daughter Christa Grant, it can also be found in shops throughout Northwest Georgia and parts of Tennessee. She said she has uncovered her mother’s work in several antique shops, which often gets mistaken for original Blue Ridge pottery that was made in the 1930’s-50.

“That’s almost redundant because she is an original artist,” Grant said laughing.

The only difference between the work her mother does now and what was produced when s he worked for Southern Potteries is the fact that origi nal Blue Ridge was made with an assembly line. Each painter had one part of the design to complete, one doing the stems, petals, trim, etc.

What Marie does now is all solo work including free handing her designs on the pieces, creating original designs, as well as firing the pieces in the kiln several times until completion. Her signature can also be found on or below leaves on her china. Marie also uses some replica Blue Ridge molds for her china as well as some modified ones, another noticeable difference.

The Southern Potteries factory was originally opened in the early 1920s, but at the time used decals on all of their china pieces. According to Marie, the pieces were only made with stencils or decals because the people producing them couldn’t paint. Later in 1930s the factory introduced the iconic Blue Ridge style that Marie would later paint.

Grant said her mother moved to Erwin, Tennessee when she was 18-years-old to live with her older sister. Her sister, who was already employed at Southern Potteries as a painter, got Marie an interview for a painting position as well. She was hired on the spot due to her exceptional painting skills and joined the assembly line.

The Blue Ridge method consisted of free handed brush work on the unglazed bisque — the unfinished china. The designs painted by t he workers were dictated by customer orders, creating a wide variety of artwork done by the artists. Marie recalled that her least favorite experience came with an order of Christmas china that required her and her group to paint poinsettias around the edges of dishes and other various china sets.