Louise Bigmeat Maney

Potter

Louise Maney comes from a line of potters. Her mother, Charlotte Bigmeat, introduced the skills of this art to her daughters, Ethel, Elizabeth, Mabel, and Louise. When Louise was about six or seven, she and her mother and brothers traveled to the clay bed which was three or four miles from their house. This process lasted all day, so they took their lunch, dug clay all day, and hauled it back home on their sled. The clay was prepared the old way, which involved letting it dry in the sun for three days. It was then beaten into powder and put in cans of water. Although it took two weeks to process enough clay to make pottery, there was no other choice. Their mother's pottery was traded for food.

Once Louise started school, she didn't work with pottery for years. Her mother's hands began cramping, so Louise helped her. It was too painful to continue the art after her mother died; besides, Louise had seven children to raise. It was only after all the children were in school that she started making pottery again. She was a teacher's aide for twenty-three years. During that time, she attended Western Carolina University in the summers. When she was in her forties, she quit school to devote her energies to her gift as a potter.

Louise's shop, Bigmeat House of Pottery, on Hwy. 19 in Cherokee is where she sells her decorative pottery. In 1998, she received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award for her continuing efforts of preserving the Cherokee culture. Her pottery appears in the Smithsonian Institution collection.