Travel Guides
Pottery Itinerary for the Seagrove Area -- Stop 7 Luck's Ware
When you leave Jugtown Pottery, backtrack – right on Jugtown Road, right on Busbee road – and make a right back onto 705. Take the next left, just past the Westmoore Family Restaurant, on Dover Church Road. Follow Dover Church Road for four miles, and then make a right on Willie Road. After two and a half miles, make a right on Adams Road. Almost immediately, turn left at the driveway into Luck’s Ware.
The pottery tradition in Sid Luck’s family stretches back five generations, to Luck’s great-great-grandfather William Luck, born around 1810, who worked with the Cole family in Whynot. Sid’s sons Jason and Matthew are potters as well, bringing the family tradition into its sixth generation.
Luck turned pots for the J. B. Cole Pottery when he was twelve years old, and acquired much of his pottery know-how from early life experience. After a tour of duty in the US Marine Corps and receiving a degree from North Carolina State University, Luck became a chemistry teacher in the public schools. During all this time, however, he kept one hand in the clay, turning pots part-time. Twenty years ago he opened Luck’s Ware. It was intended as a part-time enterprise, but quickly grew into his full-time calling, and has been ever since.
Sid Luck and the other potters of Luck’s Ware employ a variety of firing and glazing techniques. A few years ago he and his sons built an old-fashioned groundhog kiln behind the shop, which, using the method of his ancestors, Sid fires with lightwood stumps harvested from the pineywoods on old family land. Many of the bricks used in the construction of the kiln were recycled from Luck’s great-grandfather’s kiln. Easily distinguishable by the heavy coating of gray-green salt glaze that they accumulated during many firings in the nineteenth century, these bricks are a tangible reminder of the Luck family’s long legacy of craftsmanship here in the sandhills.
Photo: Face jug by Matt Luck; photo by Sarah Bryan.
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