The Gazette-Enterprise

When potter Joe Pirog was deciding where he wanted to live in the area, he looked at a map and drew a two-mile circle around the old Wilson kiln site off FM 466.

“I said I want to live within this line,” Pirog said. “I want to take everything from the land around me — the sand, the clay, the bricks, the wood — and recreate the kiln.”

Pirog’s circumference limitations landed him at the old Seguin Flag Company — a mile and a half as the crow flies from the old kiln. The site’s 10 acres, commercial shop and, of course, proximity to the project made it an ideal location.

Pirog and other assorted volunteers have already dug 5,000 pounds of clay from the original site to be made into bricks for the new kilns. Outside the flag shop, they mix two parts clay to one part sand and push and scrape the mixture into three brick molds.

The shaped clay is then set to dry, the finished bricks are stacked on top of one another and sealed together with mortars made from sand on the property.

“You have to look at the world around you and figure out how to get products out of the materials available,” Pirog said of the process.

Pirog described the old site as mostly decomposed, but through eight months of research and the remnants that remained, he was able to draw up plans to reconstruct the beehive kiln to its original 1800s state.

From the 1880s to the early turn of the century, the kiln was used to make whiskey jugs, sauerkraut crocks, chicken waterers and other storage containers. The Wilson family were former slaves who became the first black entrepreneurs in Texas.

“When the slaves were emancipated in the 1860s, they took their master’s name and went into business,” Pirog said. “They had trade skills — much more so than most slaves — and quickly had the ability to make money. They became one of the largest land owners in the area and the first black business owners.”

The kiln went out of use in 1903, probably due to the Wilsons’ age and the advent of refrigeration.

As she took a break from shoveling clay, friend and fellow potter Terry Buck commented on the importance of the project.

“I think it’s fabulous someone has the ability to keep this living history going,” Terry said. “This is a dream he wants to see through.”

Pirog has recruited potters from Gruene and New Braunfels and even a TLU professor to help out with the enormous undertaking of reconstructing the 600-square-foot wood burning kiln.

“What Joe’s trying to do it bigger than him,” said potter Dee Buck as he pushed clay into wooden brick molds. “Pottery was one of the first continuously practiced craft of early man and that’s what makes it so interesting to all of us potters — that link to tradition.”

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