NEHMA | Collection

George Ohr

American
(1857–1918)

Vase
1895-1896

Earthenware
4 x 4.5 x 4.5 in.
Gift of the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation
2020.14

Decades before Salvador Dalí began his self-aggrandizing antics, the eccentric George Ohr was posing with his eighteen-inch mustache wrapped around his cheeks and tied behind his head. He ignored conventions of ceramics, with rims on his vessels that resemble the edges of crumpled burlap bags, deliberately twisted, with wafer-thin walls as if melted in the kiln. Ohr’s Vase is a prime example of this technique. During the time when Rookwood and other potteries added decorations of stylized birds, flowers, and animals to the lifeless beiges of Victorian times, Ohr’s work boasted a kaleidoscope of colors, including slashes of olive green shot through with bright orange, and blue splattered across mustard yellow. In his “Pot-Ohr-E” studio, he turned out many thousands of “mud babies,” as he called his pots—flamboyant works with outrageous prices, most of which gathered dust during his lifetime.

George Ohr, the “Mad Potter of Biloxi,” proudly proclaimed himself the greatest potter on earth. He had tried his hand at several trades, including file cutter, tinker, blacksmith’s apprentice, and sailor, but at twenty-two he became interested in ceramics, when he apprenticed with ceramic artist Joseph Fortune Meyer in New Orleans. In the 1880s, Ohr traveled through sixteen states to see ceramic studios, shows, and museums. He wanted to make art, but first he had to make practical items like chimney flues, planters, and pitchers to support his ten children in Biloxi.

Billie Sessions, PhD.

Additional Images Click an image to view a larger version