Mae's Plant Guardians — The Last 312 from Whittington Pottery
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“My mother killed every plant she owned. So in 1986 I made the first Plant Guardian — a ceramic frog that watered them for her.” — Why a 68-year-old potter is selling her last Plant Guardians before the family kiln goes cold.
Mae Whittington made her first ceramic frog in 1986. Her mother couldn’t keep an African violet alive on her kitchen sill. The frog kept the next ones alive for three more summers.
Mae Whittington in her studio off Highway 705. The brick kiln behind her has fired pottery since 1923.
The Frog She Made For Her Mother’s Violets In 1986
Mae at the wheel. Behind her, shelves of bisque-fired frogs waiting for their eyes.
Mae Whittington is sixty-eight years old and the fourth generation of her family to throw pottery on the same patch of red clay in Randolph County, North Carolina. Her great-grandfather, Earl Whittington, opened the family kiln on Highway 705 in 1923, back when the road wasn’t yet called the Pottery Highway. Earl made jugs. His son Wilbur made churns. Mae’s father, Hollis, made face jugs that sold for $4 in the sixties. Mae started throwing at fourteen, in 1972.
She has made over forty thousand pieces in her career.
“My mother’s violets died for years because she’d forget about them. That’s why I made the first frog. It saved them for three more summers.”
The frog — green body, white belly, small painted grin, an unglazed terracotta foot at the bottom, a small opening on the back — was a gift for her mother, Etta, in 1986. Etta could not keep an African violet alive on her kitchen sill. Mae built her something that would. Etta sank the foot into the pot, filled the chamber inside with water, and the violets lived three more summers.
The frog still sits on Mae’s own windowsill, next to her radio.
It is the start of what she calls the Plant Guardian line. Three series, made one piece at a time, every piece signed in pencil on the unglazed foot before firing: Frogs for kitchen windows, Sleeping Gnomes for shaded porches, and Pastel Elephants for desktops and bedrooms. Each set holds four guardians, each set covers a standard 6 to 10 inch pot range.
This summer she is finishing the last batch she will ever make.
What She Saw On Every Other Windowsill — And Why None Of It Worked
The Boston fern that didn’t make it through two weeks. The suitcase by the door says everything.
Long before Mae made the first frog, she watched her neighbors lose houseplants for the same five reasons, year after year. She kept a mental list of what they tried — and what didn’t. All five are still sold on the shelves of garden centers today. She still calls each one by name.
1. “The Glass Bomb” (Globe Watering Spikes)
“I’ve seen them crack while people were trying to push them into the soil. The water dumps in three hours. The plant drowns on Tuesday and dies of thirst by Saturday.”
Glass watering globes break under the pressure of dense potting mix, dump their entire reservoir at once, and leave the plant to dry out for the rest of the trip. The water is gone in days, not weeks.
2. “The Hospital Mat” (Capillary Watering Mats)
“I tried one in 1998 when I was sick for three weeks. It worked. The plants lived. But the mat smelled like the inside of a fish tank within ten days.”
Capillary mats wick water from a reservoir into pot bases, but the wet fabric breeds mold and bacteria within a week. The plant survives the trip; the roots rot two months later.
3. “The Plastic Clog” (Plastic Drip Spikes)
“The plastic ones jam with soil after two days. Either the water sits there and won’t come out, or it pours through like a broken faucet. Neither one keeps a plant alive.”
Plastic drip spikes lack the porosity of unglazed terracotta. They clog with potting mix, produce wildly inconsistent flow, and look exactly like what they are — cheap plastic stuck in a pot.
4. “The Wi-Fi Waterer” (Smart Drip Systems)
“Madison’s friend has one of those Wi-Fi systems. The router went down for four days last August and her whole windowsill died. A two-hundred-dollar machine killed by a dropped signal.”
Smart watering systems depend on power, Wi-Fi, app updates, and battery life. Any one of which can fail, and most of which will, somewhere across a two-week trip.
5. “The Neighbor Promise” (Asking Someone Else To Water)
“My sister-in-law has watered for me twice. Once she forgot for nine days. Once she gave my orchids tap water with fertilizer in it. The orchids died slower the second time.”
Even well-meaning neighbors over-water, under-water, use the wrong water, or simply forget. Few houseplants survive both extremes inside fourteen days.
The frog Mae made for her mother in 1986 closed all five of those holes in a single object. It is what every Plant Guardian since has been built around.
What Makes A Whittington Plant Guardian Different From Anything Else You Can Buy
Pastel pink, hand-brushed white daisies, unglazed terracotta wick. Mae mixes the pink herself — she named it after her granddaughter.
The unglazed porous foot draws water from the chamber inside the body and releases it into the soil one molecule at a time. The same Mediterranean irrigation principle Earl Whittington used on the back tomato rows in 1947. No batteries, no electronics, no moving parts that can fail.
Filled to the top through a small opening on the back, the chamber inside each Plant Guardian holds enough water to keep a small to medium potted plant moist for up to two weeks. No power, no Wi-Fi, no app to update. The system has worked exactly the same way since Earl built the kiln in 1923.
Mae paints every face with a #2 sable brush in her studio chair. No two Plant Guardians have the same expression. The eyes on a Whittington frog are slightly crooked, slightly off-center, never machine-perfect — because they were never made by a machine.
Every piece is fired in Earl Whittington’s original brick kiln at 2,232°F, the same way every Whittington pot has been finished since 1923. Modern electric kilns can’t reproduce the subtle blush the glaze takes on inside an open-flame brick chamber.
Three signature glazes Mae mixed herself over the years, named for her granddaughter, the Pottery Highway, and the chair she sits in to paint. The recipes are written in pencil on the studio wall. When the kiln goes cold, the glazes go with it.
Three series, one studio, one set of hands. Four guardians to a set, four sets to a pot range. Frogs for kitchen sills. Sleeping gnomes for porches and shaded windows. Pastel elephants for desks and bedrooms. Each set arrives wrapped in unbleached craft paper, signed by Mae.
“I’d Rather See It In Dirt Than On A Shelf”
Each elephant takes eighteen minutes to paint. Mae can do roughly four a day before her thumb gives out.
Ask Mae about the Plant Guardians and she will not talk about the design. She will talk about the violets in her mother’s window in 1985. She will talk about the ficus her neighbor Wanda brought home from a funeral and lost the next August. She will talk about her sister-in-law’s killed orchids.
What she made, she made for a single reason: so that a person could leave for a wedding, a granddaughter’s graduation, two weeks at the cabin — and come home to a plant that was still alive.
That is what each guardian does. Quietly. Without electronics. For decades, if you keep it in a pot.
Why The Last Firing Is This October
The worst part of closing the studio, Mae says, is not the sales. It is the kiln wall.
Since she was four years old, Mae has put her palm on the back wall of the brick kiln every morning. If a firing finished overnight, the wall is still warm at sunrise. Some mornings she could feel the heat through her bare hand from a foot away. Earl Whittington built that kiln in 1923. Wilbur fired it. Hollis fired it. Mae has fired it for fifty-two years.
Mae loading the kiln. Earl Whittington fired the first batch in 1923. The bricks have stayed warm — most mornings — ever since.
“Come November, that wall’s going to be cold for the first time since my granddaddy fired it. My granddaddy fired this kiln. My daddy fired this kiln. Now nobody’s going to fire it.”
The reason is plain. Mae has arthritis in both thumbs and the base of her right index finger. The throwing — the big motor work on the wheel — is still fine. But the detail painting, the fine brushwork that gives each guardian its eyes, its stripes, its sun-pattern, has become impossible past twenty or twenty-five minutes a session. She has tried adapted brushes. She has tried thumb braces. She has tried glazing in the early morning, when the joints are loosest. It isn’t enough.
There is also no fifth generation. Her son, Earl IV, is a Navy lifer stationed in Norfolk. Her daughter, Caroline, is a contracts attorney in Charlotte. Her granddaughter Madison, twenty-four, lives in Greensboro and visits twice a month — not enough to learn the craft.
The kiln will go cold by November.
What Is Left In The Studio Today
- 104 Frogs — green/white/yellow variants, hand-painted eyes, set of 4 per box
- 96 Sleeping Gnomes — lavender, slate, moss, patterned hats, set of 4 per box + 3 hand-thrown mini scoops
- 112 Pastel Elephants — Madison Pink, Highway Green, white, sky-blue, white sun-pattern, set of 4 per box
When the 312 are gone, Mae is done.
What She Could Have Charged — And Why She Didn’t
Signed Seagrove pottery, done by a fourth-generation potter, sells in the Greensboro and Asheville galleries for $80 to $150 a piece. Mae’s studio vases and pitchers go for more than that. Several collectors in Raleigh asked her to set gallery prices on the Plant Guardians.
She said no.
“If you put it on a shelf I’d rather you didn’t buy it. The price is low on purpose. So is the reason.”
The Plant Guardians sell at gallery-floor pricing — less than the cost of a bottle of decent wine for an entire set of four, signed and fired. The reason is the one Mae has been giving since 1986: she wants the guardians in dirt, filled with water, keeping somebody’s tomato alive while they’re at their daughter’s house for two weeks. Not on a curio shelf. Not in a display case. In soil.
Whoever takes home one of the last 312 Plant Guardians takes home a small piece of a 103-year family kiln. Mae’s ask, in return, is simple: put it in a pot.
One fill keeps the soil moist for up to two weeks. No power, no app, no maintenance.
Available While The Last 312 Last
View The Remaining Plant GuardiansHand-signed by Mae · ships from Seagrove, North Carolina →
What People Are Writing About The Plant Guardians
★★★★★
“Bought the frog set for my mother, who is exactly the kind of person who forgets to water her violets. She has now sent me three photos of the frogs and the violets, both alive, two months after I left. I have never gotten three photos from my mother about anything in my life.”
— Sarah M., Pittsburgh, PA
★★★★★
“Drove down from Atlanta to pick up the elephants in person. Mae signed all four on the foot. The pink one is going to my granddaughter for her birthday with a peace lily already planted. The other three are watching my fiddle leaf fig while we go to Italy in September.”
— Margaret L., Atlanta, GA
★★★★★
“I was skeptical that a ceramic frog you fill with water through a hole in its back would do anything useful. Two weeks in Costa Rica, came back to a fern that looked the same as when we left. I do not understand how this works and I do not care. It works.”
— David K., Burlington, VT
Questions Readers Have Sent In
Where can I buy the Plant Guardians?
Only from the small online shop that Mae’s granddaughter Madison set up. They are not sold on Amazon, not sold at garden centers, and not stocked in any retail location. Madison handles every order out of the studio in Seagrove.
How long will they still be available?
Until the 312 remaining pieces in the studio sell out, or until Mae stops firing in October — whichever comes first. Once the final October firing is done, no more Plant Guardians will be made.
What if I try them and they don’t work for my plants?
Madison runs a 30-day return policy. If a guardian doesn’t keep your plant happy for at least the first two-week trip, send a quick email and you get a full refund — no shipping back, no forms, no hassle.
Limited Stock From The Final Firing
Check What’s Left In The Studio312 pieces remaining as of this morning →
More From The Studio’s First Buyers
★★★★★
“The gnomes are the most charming thing in my apartment. I bought them for the porch but they ended up on my desk because I keep wanting to look at them. They’ve also kept my pothos alive through two work trips and a wedding weekend.”
— Hannah R., Austin, TX
★★★★★
“You can feel the hand of the person who made these. The eyes on my frog aren’t quite symmetric. The pencil signature on the foot says ‘Mae 5/26’. This is the difference between buying something made by a person and buying something printed in a factory.”
— Thomas B., Portland, OR
★★★★★
“Ordered the elephants for my mother’s 70th birthday. She cried when she opened them. She has every Plant Guardian set Mae has ever made now — the frogs from last year, the elephants this year. She keeps asking me when the next one is coming. I had to tell her this is the last one.”
— Rebecca W., Charleston, SC
Disclosure: This article is a sponsored editorial feature and contains advertising. The products featured here are produced in small batches by an independent ceramic studio and supplied through Craft Folk. Stock counts shown reflect the studio’s remaining pieces at time of publication; availability may change without notice.