George E. Ohr

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George Edgar Ohr (1857-born George Herbert Ohr) was an American ceramic artist and the self-proclaimed "Mad Potter of Biloxi" in Mississippi.

Some view him as a precursor to the American Abstract-Expressionism movement due to his pioneering with modern clay forms from 1880 to 1910.

Personal life

On July 12, 1857, George Ohr was born in Biloxi, Mississippi. He was the son of German immigrants who arrived in New Orleans c. 1850 and later married and moved to Biloxi. Before becoming interested in ceramics in 1879, George Ohr tried his hand at several crafts, and Joseph Fortune Meyer's apprentice. On September 15, 1886, Ohr married Josephine Gehring of New Orleans. Ten children were born in the Orphanage, but only six survived to adulthood. On April 7, 1918, George Ohr died of throat cancer.

Ohr researched Joseph Meyer's pottery in New Orleans, a potter whose family came from Alsace-Lorraine, as did Ohr. Ohr's father owned the first blacksmith shop in Biloxi, and his mother ran an early, well-known grocery store there. Ohr claimed to have produced over 20,000 ceramic pieces in his lifetime. His work was described as "unequiled, undisputed, unrivaled." Ohr exhibited and sold his pottery at the World's Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans in 1884. Ohr boasted he had "no two alike" among the hundreds of pieces he exhibited.

Ohr's workshop was also destroyed by the 1894 fire, and it has been noted that Ohr's post-fire works display a lot of "energy" and "fluidity." George Ohr referred to his pots as "mud babies." He assembled the pieces that survived and his art, and although they were destroyed, he kept each piece, calling them his "burned babies."

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