Peter Anderson

Who was Peter Anderson?

Peter Anderson was an American ceramist and founder of Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. He was born in New Orleans to George Walter Anderson, a grain broker, and Annette McConnell Anderson, member of a prominent New Orleans family, who had studied art at Newcomb College, where she had absorbed the ideals of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Anderson was the eldest of three brothers, the others being Walter Inglis Anderson and James McConnell "Mac" Anderson. Like Walter, Peter attended St. John's School in Manlius, New York until their schooling was interrupted by World War I and they enrolled in Isidore Newman School in New Orleans.

In 1918, the Andersons purchased a large wooded tract of coastal land in Ocean Springs. It was Annette's firm intention that all three of her sons become artists, and her husband's, that they learn to make a living from it. By 1924, a year after the family moved to Ocean Springs, Peter was experimenting with pottery, and in 1928, after training with Edmund deForest Curtis at the Conestoga Pottery and with Charles F.