GEORGE OHR Vase with deep in-body twist, covered in several glazes as a glaze test. (Exhibited in "American Art Pottery, 1875-1930," Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE, 1978, catalog #96.) Short, tight line to rim. Glaze numbers on outside, pad inside stamped G.E. Ohr, Biloxi, Miss. 3 1/2" x 4 1/2"

NOTES: "One of the first experimental pieces of Ohr pottery that we bought was this little vase which has on it his colors as they developed in the firing. When applied in the liquid state, all glazes look gray, so trial and experiment were a constant occupation of potters. In this case, Ohr achieved semi-gloss colors that effectively hide the red clay beneath.") We had started dealing in antiques in 1967 and had a shop on East 93rd Street, when the collection of pottery once owned by the Ohr family emerged. Potter George Ohr had been just about forgotten. We believe there had been an attempt by Ohr or by his family to give it all to the Smithsonian Institution, but when they said no, he swore his sons to keep it intact for 50 years. Then, sometime in the fall of 1972, Jimmy Carpenter, a dealer in antique cars and their parts, happened upon the Ohr family in Biloxi, because the Ohr boys had an auto repair business there . Jim knew a good deal when he bumped into it. He had never dealt in pottery before, but before long he was doing just that. George Ohr and his bride had had ten children, not all of whom survived, and Jim found himself dealing with Leo, Lio, Zio, Oto, Clo, Ojo, and Geo. From what we remember Jimmy said, cash was what they wanted and cash they got, stuffed in a pillowcase and negotiated over a bottle of whisky. Jim came away with the family trove of more than 1000 pieces of George Ohr's pottery. He packed it into a truck, and brought it back home to Port Jervis, New York. First, he had to clean it. It had been wrapped in old newspapers for about 70 years. He was lucky in one way, having brought his purchase North in the dead of winter, all kinds of dead scorpions and critters fell out of the wrappings, frozen to death on the trip from Biloxi. Then he set it up in a frame building. There were wooden tables, wooden shelves floor to ceiling, wooden benches, and George Ohr pottery, on, under, and in everything. One set of floor-to-ceiling shelves held nothing but brown-handled mugs. The larger pieces were on the floor and all around. The special pieces with fancy decoration, lizards and so forth, were in another area in glass showcases. At least that's how we remember it. As soon as Jim unpacked the pottery, he commissioned Robert Blasberg, who was the recognized expert on art pottery at the time, to write a catalogue for him. It was the first book on Ohr, showing as many pieces as he could squeeze in. And then the word was out. In the intervening years, a spate of books have analyzed Ohr from every angle including his mathematical genius at division by sevens, by the Freudian implications of his insinuations, by his architecture, by his sculptural art forms - to the most recent, excellent volume by Bob Ellison, George Ohr, Art Potter The Apostle of Individuality*, *who credits us with starting him on his quest for Ohr. George Ohr was the most individual, and perhaps the most accomplished, of American potters. His career in pottery began in Biloxi, Mississippi with Francois and Joseph Meyer, French potters who lived there for a time. When the Meyers moved to New Orleans in 1879, Joseph offered to teach Ohr the potter’s trade. Ohr joined them there and learned to build kilns, use local clays, and worked with Meyer’s glaze formulas. Together, they made utilitarian ware and tourist novelties. They later worked for the New Orleans Art Pottery Company, established by William and Ellsworth Woodward in 1888, and when the Woodwards created the art department at Newcomb College, Ohr and Meyer were employed as potters, throwing the ware which the students decorated.. The Newcomb philosophy was to produce “no two alike,” a practice that Ohr followed in his own work. Ohr took some 600 pieces of his work to the 1884 New Orleans Cotton Centennial Exposition, although legend has it that he could not bear to part with his mud babies and would run after buyers to reclaim them. Nevertheless, throughout his life he traveled to fairs and expositions to sell. He studied pottery wherever he went, recalling late in life, "After knowing how to boss a little piece of clay into a gallon jug, I pulled out of New Orleans and took a zigzag trip for 2 years, and got as far as Dubuque, Milwaukee, Albany, down the Hudson, and zigzag back home. I sized up every potter and pottery in 16 states, and never missed a show window, illustration or literary dab on ceramics since that time." Knowing what was going on in the pottery marketplace that might have inspired Ohr adds another dimension to the study of his work. Ohr did more than merely study other potters work. He never met a potter he couldn't do better than! He took it as a personal challenge to duplicate, or improve on, all the pottery styles he encountered in his traveling years. A large body of his oeuvre was devoted to matching what he saw, usually giving his replications his own quirky interpretation. Returning home, Ohr earned a steady living by producing utilitarian wares such as flowerpots and chimney flues for the Biloxi market. As time went on, his art pottery evolved into highly individualistic objects. He appears to have given up his pottery by about 1910, when he turned the building over to his sons who used it for an auto repair shop. He died in 1918.