https://www.ragoarts.com/

"I've been looking for a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery with a monster on it for a long time. I was first offered one of these, and these are super rare. The only way we even knew they existed was because there were period photographs in the Paul Evans book publishing 3 pieces in New Orleans Art Pottery made in 1888, and 2 of them showed dragons very similar to these attached to the surface.

I get this phone call. It's like 1980, 1981, and a man from Mississippi calls me and says, "I have a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery with a tobacco monster stuck to the side of it." I get on a plane and I fly to Mississippi. I fly down there in tennis shorts, and a polo shirt, and I'm God knows where in the middle of the State. I get to a pay phone at a gas station, and I call the man's house.

This woman, I presume it was his wife, answers the phone and says, "He's not here." I said, "Well, he's got to be there because I flew down from New Jersey to pick up a piece of pottery from the New Orleans Art Pottery, and he told me he had it for me and to fly down. She goes, "Well, he's not here." She hangs up on me. I call her back. I say, "Look, there's got to be a mistake. I flew down here from New Jersey to Mississippi to buy a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery from him.

She says, "I told you, he's not home. Don't call again." She hangs up a second time. I call a third time and she picks up the phone without answering it, she sets it on the table, and I could hear the television droning in the background. That's my first experience looking for one of these. I get an email about two months ago, from a woman in Blackpool, England, saying, "I saw your piece on Antiques Road Show where you appraised an example of New Orleans Art Pottery, and I have one.

Lo and behold, there's one with, what I guess we'll call the tobacco monster, in homage to the phone call I got long ago from Mississippi, made on Verone Street, in the French Quarter. It's signed New Orleans Art Pottery, and marked Verone Street. Small operation by two of the most important potters in American Arts and Crafts, Art Pottery history, Joseph Meyer, the potter from Newcomb College who taught Giorgio how to pot, would be the man who threw this vase, and Giorgio making the tobacco monster that wraps around the piece.

Neither Meyers, or Giorgio signed the piece. In fact, I've never heard them signing any piece of New Orleans Art Pottery, while there's only this one known with the dragon attached to it. I've probably seen about 20 pieces over the years including the Jardinier that I appraised on Antique Roads Show. As far as we know, only these two were involved in the making of New Orleans Art Pottery, but beyond that the technical virtuosity of this dragon, including the way the tail is crimped, is completely consistent with the work, Ohr was to do just a year or two later at his own pottery in Biluxi, Mississippi.

This is in many ways a landmark piece of American Decorative Ceramics. It shows the early work of Joseph Meyer, as a potter, in the New Orleans area before he went to Newcomb, before Newcomb even existed. It shows George Ohr's work, as he was moving from a more traditional, Victorian, Japanesque standard to what he became known for which was crazy pots with monsters on them, and also ties into how far reaching the impact is Antique Road Show has on showing people around the world, if they have something good, just how and why those things are as important as they are.

It is the physical manifestation of a masterpiece leaving New Orleans, going to Europe, and coming back to America, almost a century and a half later. This will be for sale in our auction in Lambert Field, in October, and we hope you come see this piece and the rest of the sale."

https://www.ragoarts.com/