George E. Ohr

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George E. Ohr (1857-1918) was an early American art potter who broke new ground in the late 1890s as he experimented with modern clay forms. Some consider him the father of the American Abstract-Expressionism movement.

Ohr was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, on July 12, 1857, and died in 1918. He studied the potter's trade with Joseph Meyer in New Orleans, a potter whose family hailed from Alsace-Lorraine as did Ohr's. Ohr's father had established the first blacksmith shop in Biloxi and his mother ran an early, popular grocery store there. In his lifetime, Ohr created over 10,000 known pots, now rare and highly coveted. He called himself "The Mad Potter of Biloxi" and was a showman of the style of P.T. Barnum, a contemporary. Ohr was an iconic American figure at the turn of the last century. He called his work "unequaled, undisputed, unrivaled."

A notable feature of Ohr's pottery is that many items have thin walls, metallic glazes, and twisted, pinched shapes. To this day potters marvel at Ohr's porcelain-thin walls and unusual glazes. No one has been able to replicate them. Ohr dug much of his clay from a local river known as Tchoutacabouffa, which translates to mean "broken pot."

Ohr's work is now seen as ground-breaking. During his lifetime he was considered a lunatic and a boasting eccentric and was not accepted by his peers on the national art scene, who nonetheless had a hard time ignoring him. In the early 1900s, the Arts and Crafts Movement and its leaders (such as William Morris) advocated that an artist should display control and perfection in all art forms. George Ohr displayed little obvious perfectionism in his art or control in his person, antagonizing art leaders nationally and political leaders at home.

The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum of Art has a large permanent collection of Ohr's work. A new museum designed by Frank Gehry was scheduled to open in July 2006, but was partially destroyed during Hurricane Katrina when a casino barge was washed onto it. Efforts are under way to recover insurance, and meanwhile, a major national exhibition of Ohr pottery is being planned by the museum for 2007. A wide range of educational programs and artists' opportunities are also available.