George Ohr, the self-styled ‘mad potter of Biloxi’, was a very peculiar man. Born in 1857 to German immigrant parents, he trained as a blacksmith in his hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi. Never destined for such a mundane existence, young George went looking for excitement at the mouth of the muddy river in New Orleans when he was fourteen. After tiring of innumerable jobs, he was eventually offered an apprenticeship as a potter by fellow Biloxi man Joseph Meyer. As he would later recall – “When I found the potter's wheel I felt it all over like a wild duck in water”.
George made his own potter’s wheel. He built his own shop and kiln. He dug his own clay, concocted his own glazes and twisted his pots into forms so bizarre they were rivalled in eccentricity only by his enormous waxed moustache. His ‘Pot-Ohr-E’ workshop soon began to draw visitors from all over the state and beyond, but there was a serious mind behind the outlandish façade. A consummate craftsman, Ohr created extremely delicate vessels with very thin walls. His belief that “shape is everything” prompted him to leave many of his pots, or ‘mud babies’ as he dubbed them, unglazed.
Ohr’s career was not without its setbacks. In 1894 the Pot-Ohr-E was destroyed by fire, and many of his mud babies were charred. Rather than discard them, though, he renamed them ‘burnt babies’ and kept them. Like many a neglected genius, Ohr always knew that one day he would be revered as a visionary. He displayed signs at exhibitions proclaiming himself “the greatest art potter on Earth”, inviting browsers to “prove otherwise”. He delivered a selection of his work to America’s Smithsonian Institution, including an umbrella stand inscribed with a rambling and prophetic dedication, ending “This pot is here, and I am the potter who was”.
Fifty years after Ohr’s death, an antiques dealer stumbled across crates of his work in his old pottery, now converted to a mechanic’s workshop. In what was surely the best investment of his entire life, he negotiated a price of $50,000 (£25,000) for the thousands of mud babies and began releasing them onto the wider market. In the tumult of re-evaluation that followed, George Ohr’s self-belief was more than vindicated. He is now considered one of the most important American potters ever, and his work costs a small fortune – around $4,000 (£2,000) for a single pot at the lower end, rising to $20,000 (£10,000) or more for larger and more important pieces.
