Pottery with a New Orleans Flavor

 

QUESTION: I’ve always liked Arts and Crafts pottery. I understand that women made and decorated some of the different types of that pottery. One particular type that I’ve admired is Newcomb pottery. What can you tell me about it and the women who created it?

ANSWER: The years from the mid-1890s to just before World War I witnessed a progressive movement that affected not only the arts but the way people viewed how things were made.  During the second half of the 19th century, mass production of many products, including pottery, became common. This gave rise to a movement that looked back to when people made it by hand. At the same time, women began to look beyond the home to fulfill their lives. 

Newcomb Pottery was produced from 1895 to 1940. The company grew out of the pottery program at H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, the women's college now associated with Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. The Pottery was a contemporary of other Arts and Crafts potteries, such as Rookwood, North Dakota, Teco, and Grueby.

Pottery decoration was one of the programs offered at the College since other Arts and Crafts potteries, such as the Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati had begun employing women to decorate their pots This was one field where women could earn money in a respectable manner.

Under the tutelage of Professor William Woodward, advanced Newcomb art students participated in the Tulane Decorative Art League, which combined with the New Orleans Art League Pottery Club to take over the old New Orleans Art Pottery facility in 1890. Students employed their pottery decorating skills here until the Newcomb Pottery was organized in 1895. The Pottery Club encouraged Newcomb students with decorating experience to focus their artistic efforts on wares produced at the school facility. The plan was to establish a pottery program by converting a former chemistry laboratory into a pottery studio so that students could sell their wares and make the program self sufficient.

Two art professors, Ellsworth and William Woodward, who had been members of the faculty since the opening of Newcomb College became the driving forces behind the College’s art school. Ellsworth Woodward developed a curriculum in which women could be trained to earn money in a field other than the already acceptable vocation of teaching.

The first people the Woodwards hired to assist with the new pottery program were the potters. Unlike the artists who created and carved the designs for the Newcomb Pottery, the potters were all men. Even though the College was progressive for its day, the administration believed that only men could work the clay, throw the pots, fire the kiln, and handle the glazing. So they hired men to throw the pots, a task the school considered unladylike, beyond the abilities of the female students, and beneath their dignity  The first potter they hired in 1895 was a Frenchman named Jules Garby 1895. Joseph Meyer, one of Newcomb Pottery's most recognized potters, followed him in 1896, About the same time, the Woodwards hired the eccentric potter George Ohr. His tenure lasted for less than two years, at which time they fired him because they said he was unfit to instruct young ladies. Ohr went on to establish his own pottery in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1897.  

Jonathan Hunt replaced Meyer in 1927 and later Kenneth Smith in 1929. After Hunt left the Pottery in 1933, Francis Ford replaced him. Both Smith and Ford stayed with the Newcomb Pottery program through its termination in 1940.

Eventually, the Pottery designated women who worked regularly in it as craftsmen with a preference given to those who had completed an undergraduate degree and a later graduate studies program with the school’s art department.

The women were responsible for creating and carving designs for each piece of pottery the program produced. During the Pottery’s existence, they created and carved over 70,000 unique pieces.

Early pieces at the Pottery closely reflected the Arts and Crafts style. The pottery often depicted Louisiana's local flora, done in blue, yellow and green high glazes. Newcomb Pottery was at its peak from 1897 to 1917. During that time, the women experimented with various glazes and designs, winning many awards at exhibitions throughout the country and in Europe. 

As the school entered the 1920s, new professors arrived and began to introduce influences from the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art. Highly carved pieces done in matt glazes of blue, green and pink marked this period. The Pottery introduced one of its most famous designs, the "Moon & Moss" style, during this time.

Newcomb Pottery also recruited pottery experts to help improve its product. Among them was Mary Given Sheerer from the Cincinnati area, originally hired to train the students in the slip-decorating techniques popularized at that time by the Rookwood Pottery.

Though training genteel young women was the Pottery’s main goal, the potters and students attempted a number of styles, as they sought to best use the raw materials available in the vicinity of New Orleans. The had originally planned to replicate the contemporary style of the Rookwood Pottery but that failed because slip-painting was unreliable in the hot and humid New Orleans climate. By 1900, Sheerer had to adapt her style, first to biscuit-painted designs and later to incised decorations, both under a high-gloss transparent glaze.

The potters also experimented with the types of clays they used to form the pots. The first clays they used fired either red or buff. A few years later, they used only clays from St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. They mixed these clays with loam gathered from the banks of the Mississippi River to produce white bodies.

With the end of the First World War, the popularity of the Arts and Crafts Movement waned. What had once seemed attractive and desirable because of its handmade qualities now looked rustic, old-fashioned and amateurish.

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George Ohr—Just a Little Bit Eccentric

QUESTION: On a recent trip to New Orleans, I found and bought a quirky piece of art pottery in an antique shop. The dealer said it was by George Ohr, but I’ve never heard of him. I like the bizarre look this piece has and would like to find more. Can you tell me more about this potter?

ANSWER: George Ohr was a local potter that actually hailed from Biloxi, Mississippi. He was a real character and his personality definitely comes through in his pots.

In the early 1850s, Ohr’s parents moved to Biloxi, Mississippi, where his father opened the town’s first blacksmith shop. George worked with him and learned the trade. But when he was 18, Ohr left to seek his fortune in New Orleans.  There he worked at a ship chandler's shop for free room and board plus soap for washing. After three years, he was still getting free soap and only $15 per month. So he went back home to Biloxi where he worked as an apprentice in a file cutter's shop and in a tinker's shop.

Disenchanted with his situation, he returned to New Orleans to learn all he could about potting. As soon as he mastered enough technical skills, Ohr left and spent two years traveling to 16 states to observe other potters and their potteries.

He returned to Biloxi in 1883 with $26.80 with which he equipped his own pottery. He spent most of the money on bricks for his kiln. He did all his own work—digging the clay from a nearby riverbank, loading it in a wheelbarrow, and hauling it back to his shop, which he called the "POT-OHR-E." He called his creations "mud babies" and made over 600 pieces in his first  year. He exhibited some of them at the North Cotton Centennial Exposition, but someone stole them.


On Sept. 15, 1886 Ohr married Josephine Gehring of New Orleans. They had 10 children, but the first two died very young. To support his family, he began selling novelty pottery and souvenir items, such as flowerpots, ceramic hats, children's banks and plaques of Southern buildings at local fairs. He once said that if it weren’t for the housewives of Biloxi who have a constant need of flowerpots, water coolers and flues, the Ohr family would go hungry. Ohr hated to part with his "mud baby" creations, so he put high prices on his best works to see what the market would bear.



It didn't take Ohr long to get the reputation of being just a little bit eccentric. People began calling him “the made potter from Biloxi.” This was in part due to his bizarre appearance. Ohr had long hair that he knotted on top of his head with a brass pin and a long beard that was usually tucked into his shirt to keep it from getting caught in the potter's wheel. He often made a public spectacle of himself—from boasting about his artistic talents to zooming down the street on his bicycle with his 18-inch-long mustache tucked behind his ears. Ohr admitted that he acted "crazy" to attract tourists to his shop.

Although Ohr won a medal at the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, he became disillusioned with the pottery business because he didn't think people appreciated his work. So he abruptly closed his pottery in 1906 and became a motorcycle salesman and then an automobile dealer. Ohr died in 1918, still convinced he was the greatest potter who ever lived. He left his pottery to his children with the request that it not be sold until 50 years after his death. He believed the originality of his work would be appreciated in time.

In 1968, exactly 50 years after Ohr's death, James W. Carpenter, a New Jersey antique dealer, discovered over 7,000 pieces of Ohr's pottery in the attic of the Ohr Boy's Auto Repair Shop. He purchased all of them from Ohr's children and offered it for sale in the New York area. People soon recognized these works of an obscure turn-of-the-century potter as the creation of a genius ahead of his time and not just the works of "the mad potter of Biloxi."

Each piece of pottery created by George Ohr is totally unique. Although he made the usual bowls, vases, mugs, pitchers and teapots, no two were alike in shape or decoration. Ohr had a mischievous nature and enjoyed making unusual forms as well, such as puzzle cups for which the puzzle was how to drink from it without spilling the contents. He made a coffeepot with a lid that couldn’t be removed. The trick was to fill it from the bottom.

Some of Ohr's work showed the Art Nouveau influence of the time. He applied snakes, crabs, seashells, dragons and even the head of a wildcat. Today, these pieces sell for high prices.

Ohr was an expert on the potter’s wheel. He created eggshell-thin vessels of fine quality but wasn’t satisfied with their static quality. He dug his fingers into the moist clay and twisted, dented, pinched, squeezed and generally "tortured" the white and red local clays into amazing one-of-a-kind forms. Ohr designed his elaborate handles with curves and scrolls in the style of wrought iron, influenced by his work with his father as a blacksmith.

Ohr’s glazes, in deep and lustrous in shades of brown, red, bright pink, purple, cobalt blue, yellow and green luster, were as varied as his pottery forms. His colors were Many objects had a gunmetal or pewter finish. He experimented with volcanic, sponged, drip, blister, iridescent, tortoiseshell and pigeon feather glazes. And on some of his pieces, he flawed or sometimes even burned his glazes.

As he got older, he left his works in the unglazed bisque stage. He believed God put no color on souls, so why should he put color on his pots.

It wasn’t until Carpenter put the pieces he discovered up for sale in the 1970s that Ohr’s work found a market, and it was his bisque pieces that got the highest prices. It seems that some of the buyers then glazed these pieces in order to earn more money from resale.

Today, collectors seek Ohr’s twisted, tortured forms and colorful vibrant glazes. It’s what he would have wanted when he was making them.

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