by:
Clark, Garth
Ellison, Robert A.
Hecht, Eugene

Publisher:
Abbeville Press
Published:November 1, 1989
ISBN:0896599272
Format:Hardcover
Pages:192

Description: From Publishers Weekly
The self-styled "Biloxi Mud Dauber," Mississippi art potter Ohr (1857-1918) produced thousands of ceramic pieces that were out of step with their time. Detractors have called them bizarre, crude, even ugly, but his supporters saw Ohr as an eccentric genius, a romantic who staked unexplored aesthetic territory with unprecedented shapes and idiosyncratic glazes, and created a polychromatic spectrum of works. A picaresque rebel with flashing eyes and a long white beard, Ohr deemed these pots his "mud babies." Scores of them are on display in this monograph illustrated with 140 color and 100 black-and-white photos. Clark wrote American Ceramics , Ellison is a founder of the American Ceramic Arts Society and Hecht is an editor of Arts and Crafts Quarterly.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description:
A brilliantly written, lavishly produced volume on an important yet little- known clay artist.

Misunderstood and unappreciated during his lifetime (1857-1918), George Ohr, America's archetypal artist-potter, pushed the form of the vessel beyond mere function to the point of abstraction. Today the genius of this radical and sophisticated artist has finally been recognized. His thin-walled, paper-light pots, labeled grotesque in his day, are now seen as a tour de force of delicacy and restraint and a stunning exploration of the plasticity of clay. Ruffling, twisting, tearing, and collapsing his fragile pots, Ohr anticipated much of what we take for granted in contemporary art and ceramics.

Stunningly illustrated with 140 color images of his most important pieces, this landmark volume, winner of the George Wittenborn Award for outstanding art books from the Art Libraries Society of North America, presents the first major study of Ohr. Beautifully woven together, the text and images confirm a judgment the Mad Potter once passed on himself: "Unequaled! Unrivaled! Undisputed!" he wrote on a sign outside his shop, "Greatest Art Potter on Earth!"

Other Details: 240 illustrations,140 in full color. 10 x 12" trim size. First published in 1989.