James McConnell Anderson
James McConnell "Mac" Anderson was an American painter, muralist, and pottery designer and decorator, youngest of the three brothers who collaborated at Shearwater Pottery, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi.
Early life and education
Born in New Orleans, Anderson was the third and youngest son of Annette McConnell and George Walter Anderson. He attended military boarding school, and in Chattanooga, graduating in 1926. He studied architecture at Tulane University with William Spratling from 1926 until 1928.Art and business career
Anderson's brother Peter opened the Shearwater Pottery Factory in Ocean Springs, Mississippi in 1928, on a 24-acre parcel of property his parents had purchased in 1918. In 1929 Anderson and his brother Walter built an extension adjacent to Peter's factory. The brothers began working at the Annex in 1930. Anderson made molds, fired the products, and supervised Shearwater's production.In Shearwater's third year of existence, he joined his brother Walter in a new business venture, "the Shearwater Annex", where, over the years, the two of them designed and produced inexpensive decorative objects ranging from sets of ceramic baseball and football players, to humorous figurines of Southern blacks and legendary pirates, to lamp bases, and smaller objects called "widgets", which "filled spaces in the kiln under the larger pieces to increase the value of the firing". Characteristic pieces included the baseball player series, woodpecker mugs, small fish and animals. The figurines, which appealed to Gulf Coast tourists, received national publicity in the early 1930s and helped Shearwater survive the Depression. Image:Mac vases1.jpg|frame|right|James McConnell Anderson, "Cat Vase", "Oyster Tongers"