James McConnell Anderson

James McConnell "Mac" Anderson (August 9, 1907, New Orleans – 1998, Jackson County, Mississippi) was an American painter, muralist, and pottery designer and decorator, youngest of the three brothers (along with Walter Inglis Anderson and founder Peter Anderson) who collaborated at Shearwater Pottery, Ocean Springs, Mississippi (Ocean Springs Archives).

Born in New Orleans, Anderson attended schools there (Isidore Newman School) and in Chattanooga (the McCallie School), graduating in 1926, and studied briefly at Tulane University with William Spratling before devoting himself to the family business. In Shearwater's third year of existence (1931), he joined his brother Walter ("Bob") 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" (Lebow, "James McConnell Anderson"). Characteristic pieces included the baseball player series, woodpecker mugs, small fish and animals (Patti Carr Black, p. 200). The figurines, which appealed to Gulf Coast tourists, received national publicity in the early 1930s and helped Shearwater survive the Depression.

More important to Anderson's artistic legacy were his meticulously decorated vases and bowls, several of which won recognition in the Robineau competition at Syracuse University); his ceramic murals, done with his brother Peter, for the Ocean Springs Public School under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project (1934) (Murals) and, beginning in the 1940s, his oil paintings, fabric designs, block prints, and private and public murals.

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