Trio open studio to practice, teach Southeastern style pottery

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. – At 11, Trey Pruitt is the youngest member of his family, yet he has been making pottery longer than all of them.


“He was our first potter,” said his mother, Sandy.


On a recent Friday evening, the youngest of the Pruitt’s three children fashioned a small figure from clay at his parent’s pottery studio in Tahlequah. It’s not unusual to find the Woodall Public Schools student and his parents, David and Sandy, deep in concentration over a block of clay, even at the end of a work week.


“I just finished a turtle,” he said.


After walking to a shelf along the wall, he returns with a small, smiling figure. When he was 8-years-old, Trey and his cousin, Tabor Hammer, were playing in a spring-fed creek running near their home in Adair County when they noticed clay oozing out from between slate slabs on the bank. The boys gathered it and made pies and small figures with it. That summer’s discovery changed the Pruitt family.


“That clay, actually, turned out to be very good clay,” David said.


And because it does not require additional tempering – adding finely-crushed sandstone, shells or rocks to make it stand up to firing – the Pruitts include it in a specially processed clay they call Cherokee rose. Cherokee rose, given its hue from iron oxide, does not crumble when fired properly, and is Cherokee Pottery Studio’s signature mixture.


In only three years, the family’s hobby became serious.


In 2009, Trey won first place in a Johnson O’Malley (J.O.M.) fine arts competition. Soon after, the Pruitts took a class offered through J.O.M. at Peavine School. Although he was reluctant to get involved, Sandy persuaded her husband and he found he liked it. The family did pottery at the kitchen table for a year. When it became too messy and outgrew the house, the Pruitts opened Cherokee Pottery Studio in May. They now spend most of their free time there.


To date, Pruitt has won awards in the Cherokee National Holiday Art Show, at the Adair County 4-H Fair and at the Tulsa State Fair.


Dad has had his share of honors from the Holiday art show as well as the Trail of Tears Art Show, the Five Civilized Tribes Art Show and the Cherokee Homecoming Art Show.


Sandy hasn’t entered any of her work in competition yet. She does, however, show students of all ages and skill levels the steps to make an array of vessels and objects using traditional tools, native clay and imagery. Although the studio has an assortment of modern implements and devices to work the clay, you’ll still find corn cobs, hickory nuts and peach pits used to stamp designs into the clay.


Such techniques were rediscovered by artists like Anna Mitchell. The Pruitts cite Mitchell as one of leaders in the revival of traditional Southeastern pottery.


At Cherokee Pottery Studio, they implement the rediscovered art of molding orbs, shields, squash pots, effigy pots and other pottery styles with techniques such as slip painting and slab-building.


David is a TERO (Tribal Employment Rights Office) certified artist and the studio is a TERO-certified business, meaning it is identified as an official Cherokee-owned business. That kind of affiliation lends authenticity to the work they produce and affords special privileges, including preference when it comes to bidding on materials for their pottery from other TERO-certified businesses and access to the Nation’s job bank to find buyers commissioning work, such as Cherokee Casinos.


David has sold some pieces to the casinos already and says he has been negotiating to have some of his work shown in a traveling exhibit of contemporary Native work that opens next year in New York.


Recently, the couple helped the Sequoyah High School student council make a large batch of clay ornaments in the shapes of leaves and Cherokee syllabary characters to decorate a Christmas tree at the Oklahoma governor’s mansion.


David’s and Sandy’s fingerprints have been rubbed away from working the clay, and the minerals contained in it have left their hands soft – a side effect of this occupation.


“It’s a stress reliever for me, really. It takes your mind off of everything else because you have to concentrate on the piece you’re working on. I enjoy it,” David said.


Trey said he hopes he will be able to do work much like his dad. Considering that the young potter recently had a buyer for one of his contest pieces before it was even exhibited or judged, he has much to look forward to.


As the Southeastern pottery tradition continues to reemerge among the Cherokee, the Pruitts plan to stay put and teach as long as people are interested in Native arts.


“I think that’s why there’s such an interest in it,” Sandy said.


And no one need be intimidated. Cherokee Pottery Studio students leave their first class with a finished piece. Pottery is accessible to everyone.


“I’ve never found anybody that couldn’t,” David said. “I can’t think of anybody.”


Cherokee Pottery Studio is located at 17952 S. Muskogee Ave., Tahlequah. For more information, call (918) 456-0449 or (918) 507-0505. You may also reach the studio by email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..


Although the Pruitts have spent relatively few years in pottery, the studio walls and shelves testify to the time they have truly invested. David’s raku pieces are easily recognizable for their metallic sheen and glaze. Raku is clay from Japan with a lot of sand mixed in. The clay is strong and withstands multiple firings in a 1,800-degree kiln.

NATIVE AMERICAN TIMES PHOTO / KAREN SHADE