I am the Potter Who Was
August 17, 2016 3:48 PM Subscribe
George Ohr: The Mad Potter of Biloxi. Visit the Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi, where his twisted, flowing, lumpy, misshapen, crimped, dented, folded, and shimmering ceramic pieces are on display.
I Really Hated Ohr
I Really Hated Ohr
I really hated George Ohr. Not just his pottery, but him. At the tender age of twenty I was introduced to a significant body of his work. I was a native New Jerseyan and a blossoming ceramics dealer, and one bright 1975 Sunday at the Lambertville flea market, shopping at Marie’s Pottery Barn, I observed a mesmerizing collection of uncommonly red pieces, with twisty forms and scrunched rims. I could have all twenty pieces, Marie said, for $3,000, which was pretty much what my new wife and I had received as wedding gifts a few months earlier.
About a week after that was when I really began to hate George Ohr.
Ohhh, I get to be relevant again!!!
Geo. Ohr's pottery is, in fact, amazing. His ability to control the collapse of his pots to create the gentle undulations is a mark of his skill. I mean, we're talking eggshell thin wet clay, spinning around at about 35rpm, and he could still skillfully control the collapse of what was a pretty great clay, even by modern pottery standards is enough to make him quality, but then he went all crazy creating glazes with colors that wouldn't be seen again until well after his death, and by serious, driven potters. Throw onto that a outsider personality in a tourist destination, the fact that the abstract expressionists held him near and dear to some of their crusty hearts, and you have someone who the market was all but waiting for, when the push towards outsider art occurred in the early years of the 21st century.
I've had a few bits of his pottery pass through my hands over the years during my tenure as an enthusiastic amateur in the pottery world. Most of it was throwaway tourist ware: ashtrays, mugs with poop in them, usually in a strange moss green color. But one piece, man, that one piece I regret selling, even though I made enough money to continue living my boho weirdo lifestyle for a significant chunk of time, it still stand on the short list of things I Wish I Still Had. It was a vase. Maybe five-six inches tall. The glaze was an amazing purple-lavender cirrus cloudscape. It folded over on it self in a baroque series of folds and was so light, I often wondered if I should keep my spare change in it to keep it from floating off. Let me break down why I loved it...
Part the first: Adding lightness. This pot was amazing. A test of a potter's skill is traditionally to see how high one can throw with one pound of clay. A good student can hit six inches of wet clay. A pro can hit nine. A potter of significant talent can make a pot stand when it's eggshell thin and go for a foot or more. But this was above and beyond anything I had ever held, and I've be held pots from antiquity, craft period, modern and all across the globe. The man. Had. Skill. Talent respect talent. The previous lightest pots I ever held was from a modern potter in North Carolina who could throw a pot taller than me, a 6'4" Tennessee White Boy. And his pots were insane. Ohr's was even beyond him. We're talking cotton ball weight. And then, as the pot collapsed under its own weight, he'd make those folds. Those wonderful folds. That is not skill, but poetry. Imagine talking a collapsing building into a mosaic.
Part the second: Color. Oh. My Gawd. Glaze formulation is a science now, but Ohr was doing things no one else was doing at the same time as him. Yes, the Monrovians in North Carolina were doing amazing lead glazed colors and the Koreans were doing stuff even they didn't understand, but he was above and beyond that. I mean, the complexity of color and patterns he could wring out of the chemicals and firing ability in his meager studio are something else. For instance: we now know that copper will vaporize out of a glaze to affect surrounding areas, producing a vivid red. Clever technique with such horrible things as manganese will create purples that would be right at home in a 1980's wardrobe, combine that with the nano technology we don't even understand in volcanic ash and you can get surface effects that will make large beardy men cry. Ohr, did this. He can't have known half of the why we now know involving such weirdness as tin particulate and the effects of calcined minerals. He just did it. And it's astounding.
You can dislike what he stands for. You can dislike the work, but anyone who doesn't acknowledge he's a (possibly self-taught) Picasso of the form, I shall have very strong words with.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 5:26 PM on August 17, 2016 [8 favorites]
Geo. Ohr's pottery is, in fact, amazing. His ability to control the collapse of his pots to create the gentle undulations is a mark of his skill. I mean, we're talking eggshell thin wet clay, spinning around at about 35rpm, and he could still skillfully control the collapse of what was a pretty great clay, even by modern pottery standards is enough to make him quality, but then he went all crazy creating glazes with colors that wouldn't be seen again until well after his death, and by serious, driven potters. Throw onto that a outsider personality in a tourist destination, the fact that the abstract expressionists held him near and dear to some of their crusty hearts, and you have someone who the market was all but waiting for, when the push towards outsider art occurred in the early years of the 21st century.
I've had a few bits of his pottery pass through my hands over the years during my tenure as an enthusiastic amateur in the pottery world. Most of it was throwaway tourist ware: ashtrays, mugs with poop in them, usually in a strange moss green color. But one piece, man, that one piece I regret selling, even though I made enough money to continue living my boho weirdo lifestyle for a significant chunk of time, it still stand on the short list of things I Wish I Still Had. It was a vase. Maybe five-six inches tall. The glaze was an amazing purple-lavender cirrus cloudscape. It folded over on it self in a baroque series of folds and was so light, I often wondered if I should keep my spare change in it to keep it from floating off. Let me break down why I loved it...
Part the first: Adding lightness. This pot was amazing. A test of a potter's skill is traditionally to see how high one can throw with one pound of clay. A good student can hit six inches of wet clay. A pro can hit nine. A potter of significant talent can make a pot stand when it's eggshell thin and go for a foot or more. But this was above and beyond anything I had ever held, and I've be held pots from antiquity, craft period, modern and all across the globe. The man. Had. Skill. Talent respect talent. The previous lightest pots I ever held was from a modern potter in North Carolina who could throw a pot taller than me, a 6'4" Tennessee White Boy. And his pots were insane. Ohr's was even beyond him. We're talking cotton ball weight. And then, as the pot collapsed under its own weight, he'd make those folds. Those wonderful folds. That is not skill, but poetry. Imagine talking a collapsing building into a mosaic.
Part the second: Color. Oh. My Gawd. Glaze formulation is a science now, but Ohr was doing things no one else was doing at the same time as him. Yes, the Monrovians in North Carolina were doing amazing lead glazed colors and the Koreans were doing stuff even they didn't understand, but he was above and beyond that. I mean, the complexity of color and patterns he could wring out of the chemicals and firing ability in his meager studio are something else. For instance: we now know that copper will vaporize out of a glaze to affect surrounding areas, producing a vivid red. Clever technique with such horrible things as manganese will create purples that would be right at home in a 1980's wardrobe, combine that with the nano technology we don't even understand in volcanic ash and you can get surface effects that will make large beardy men cry. Ohr, did this. He can't have known half of the why we now know involving such weirdness as tin particulate and the effects of calcined minerals. He just did it. And it's astounding.
You can dislike what he stands for. You can dislike the work, but anyone who doesn't acknowledge he's a (possibly self-taught) Picasso of the form, I shall have very strong words with.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 5:26 PM on August 17, 2016 [8 favorites]
FYI, if you want to actually see Ohr's (amazing!) work, the Ohr-O'Keefe museum is not the place to do it. The lighting is so bad they have flashlights for the guests, which works about as well as you'd expect.
posted by zeptoweasel at 5:50 PM on August 17, 2016
posted by zeptoweasel at 5:50 PM on August 17, 2016
George Ohr mugging for the camera
I see what you did there.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:00 PM on August 17, 2016
I see what you did there.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:00 PM on August 17, 2016
That is some incredible pottery. I had not heard of George Ohr before, so thanks for the cool post!
posted by inparticularity at 9:37 PM on August 17, 2016
posted by inparticularity at 9:37 PM on August 17, 2016
The museum itself is really funky looking, too! I distinctly remember visiting the Gulf Coast post-Katrina and thinking "what the hell is that thing?"
But then, I'm from next door Ocean Springs, so I was raised on Peter Anderson's Shearwater Pottery, none of this Ohr craziness.
posted by solotoro at 11:03 AM on August 18, 2016
But then, I'm from next door Ocean Springs, so I was raised on Peter Anderson's Shearwater Pottery, none of this Ohr craziness.
posted by solotoro at 11:03 AM on August 18, 2016
(Glad to see someone else is a fan of the *other* crazy potter from the Mississippi coast. I've got Shearwater stuff in my house, and prints from Walter, thanks to growing up in the area and dating a girl from Ocean Springs in college.)
The Ohr-O'Keefe museum is totally bananapants, and (neat as it is) looks COMPLETELY out of place on a coast dominated by hotel-casinos and whatnot. Which, to me, adds to the appeal.
posted by uberchet at 12:29 PM on August 18, 2016
The Ohr-O'Keefe museum is totally bananapants, and (neat as it is) looks COMPLETELY out of place on a coast dominated by hotel-casinos and whatnot. Which, to me, adds to the appeal.
posted by uberchet at 12:29 PM on August 18, 2016
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Um, okay...
posted by ejs at 4:32 PM on August 17, 2016