Terri Smart scoops up a gob of red mud, shapes it into a wet baseball, and throws it down on the potter’s wheel at Westmoore Pottery in northern Moore County.

Wetting her hands, she touches the clay and it rises to her touch, suddenly becoming an 18th century custard cup.

Had this been 1776, she could have been arrested.

Colonists were forbidden to manufacture such wares. By act of Parliament these parts were only to supply cheap raw materials to England. Americans could dig, screen, pack, and ship clay: Englishmen would make the pots.

So it may be fitting that replicas of outlaw colonial tableware from Moore County play a part in “The Patriot,” the new Mel Gibson film set in the American Revolution.

Westmoore Pottery, specialists in historic ceramics of the 16th to the early 19th centuries, supplied over $1,000 worth of jugs, plates, tankards, and other faithful, handmade replicas for “The Patriot,” Mel Gibson’s new Revolutionary War film.

“The Patriot” opened nationwide Wednesday, and Smart was there to see it, along with Westmoore’s owners, Mary and David Farrell. Cinema Four in Southern Pines played host to these potters and their children for the opening-night show.

The film’s art director turned down the most historically accurate design, redware, in favor of the lighter-colored salt-glazed stoneware actually older in the period, according to Mary Farrell. Redware was the major output of North Carolina’s potters up until around 1850, she says.

At first, she wondered why the director rejected the right redware in favor of the “wrong” stoneware.

“When I saw the scene in the kitchen,” she said, “I could see they had a lot of redware that must already have been on display there.”

The kitchen is at Historic Brattonsville, near McConnell, S.C. The museum site was one location for the movie during production. The Farrells sent their replicas there.

This is not the first time the Farrells have been summoned to the aid of Hollywood.

Westmoore’s wares went as well to the sets of “Amistad,” released in 1997, and recent calls from another producer may indicate further roles in a forthcoming Canadian picture.

“They always call at the last minute,” Mary Farrell says. “Movie people seem to think two weeks is plenty of time.”

She sent virtually their entire stock of pre-Revolutionary stoneware to the set in South Carolina.

“The Patriot” is loosely based on the adventures of Francis Marion, “The Swamp Fox.” His band of militia harried Cornwallis’ troops guerrilla-style, keeping his army bogged down in the Santee swamps along the Carolinas border just long enough for Washington to break free and head south and for the French fleet to cross the Atlantic.

By the time Cornwallis’ troops reached the outskirts of what is now Carthage, French warships were nearing the Virginia coast. At Yorktown, His Majesty’s general, grumpy in defeat, would send a subordinate to tender his sword.

Illegal pottery was only one part of the underground American economy fueling resentment and rebellion. Across 13 colonies, Carolina clay, turned and burned, lay under sweet potatoes, slices of cured ham, ears of field fresh corn and steaming pones baked from the meal. Outlaw tankards contained other corn products illegal to make at home even today.