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George Ohr was born
in Mississippi in 1857 and grew up during the turmoil of the
Civil War and the South's defeat and the reconstruction period
that followed. The Ohr family arrived from Europe along with
thousands of other immigrants to escape the economic hard times
in Europe. His father George Ohr, Sr. set up shop as a blacksmith
in Biloxi, Mississippi and his son George, with little formal
education, began apprenticing in the shop during childhood and
as was common during these times. George Jr. was headstrong
and was sometimes at odds with his family, and he soon tired
of being a blacksmith. He left home at the age of 14 and began
sailing on merchant ships for a time, but he soon gave up and
returned to Biloxi. In 1879, Joseph Fortune Meyer, an old family
friend and an accomplished potter, gave young George a job in
New Orleans working in his studio.
From the start, George
Ohr knew that the life of a potter was the ideal he had been
seeking. After learning the basics, Ohr embarked on a journey
that took him through 16 U. S. states and into Canada, learning
all the while about ceramics whenever and wherever he could.
After his trip, he once again returned to Biloxi but this time
set up his own shop and planned to dig his own high quality
clay along the banks of the Tchoutacabouffa River. Ohr took
over 600 pieces of his unique, one of a kind pottery to the
1884 World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in
New Orleans. During these times, fairs provided one of the few
opportunities for potters to view other potter's work as well
as exotic exhibits from other countries. Ohr displayed a broad
variety of products including flower pots, stove flues, drain
tiles, water jugs, and more, but he also exhibited his first
art pottery. However, art pottery was not his focus as he focused
on more utilitarian wares during this time to essentially pay
the bills. This became even more important after his marriage
in 1886 to Josephine Gehring and the subsequent birth of their
10 children. In 1894, a major fire burned Ohr's workshop to
the ground, and all his prior work was destroyed.
As opposed to letting
the fire and destruction depress him, Ohr saw it as a liberating
event that freed him from his past in order to create a new
and more artistic, expressionistic future. The result was an
explosion of creativity driven by the urgency to recreate a
life's work. The heavily manipulated ceramics he produced evoke
the free form nature of other non-traditionalists like Frank
Gehry's architecture. Ohr ceramics were highly individualized
by the man himself; in fact, he ridiculed Rookwood
because of how many different people participated in the making
of each work.
Largely unknown and
uncollected for many years following his death, a New York antiques
dealer Jim Carpenter discovered many unknown pieces of Ohr pottery
discarded in the auto parts junkyard run by Ohr's two sons in
Biloxi. The resulting exposure when he brought the works back
to New York City for sale attracted buyers like Andy Warhol
and Jasper Johns, and his fame was thus assured. Ohr's work
has become among the most recognizable and appreciated among
collectors over the last 30 years, and his ceramics and their
market appeal remain of strong interest to collectors today.
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