Stephen Score set a new world auction record for a weathervane, purchasing a Goddess of Liberty vane for $1 million at Christie's. This broke the previous record he set in 1990 for a Jonathan Howard horse-and-rider vane purchased for $770,000. While the Howard vane is considered a masterwork, some experts were surprised by the high price for the Liberty vane, which was in poorer condition and of a less historically valued design. Score was clearly determined to acquire the piece, battling fellow collector Marguerite Riordan in a head-to-head bidding war to set the new record.

1. I
t was, in Yogi Berra’s words, déjà vu all over again. Six-
teen years after two ardent Americana dealers duked it
out in a New York salesroom, smashing the world auc-
tion record for a weathervane, the same two players—
Stephen Score of Boston,Mass.,and Marguerite Riordan
of Stonington, Conn.—did it again. In January 1990 at
Sotheby’s, Score ponied up $770,000, a spectacular price
for a strikingly large, supremely elegant Jonathan
Howard & Co horse-and-rider vane (see page 2), a work
whose “poetry and nobility” Score still gushes about.
BUYING SMART
COLLECTOR
That nosebleed price stood until this month at
Christie’s, when Score again triumphed in a head-to-
head battle with Riordan. The record-breaker this time?
A swooshy-hipped Goddess of Liberty vane (at left)
whose swelling robes Score breathlessly likened to a com-
bination of the ancient Nike of Samothrace and Snow
White’s ball gown. “Once in a while,” he says, “I see
something I would eat worms for.” In Liberty’s case, $1
million worth of worms.
Yet, some folk art mavens are scratching their heads.
The extensively exhibited and published Howard horse-
and-rider vane is an acknowledged masterwork by the
most revered maker. This Liberty, on the other hand, is a
longshot to be anointed the new standard-bearer of the
weathervane world. Sure, it had a sweet provenance,
being sold by the original family over whose barn it
twirled since the 1870s.But its surface,so crucial to value,
wasn’t stellar by connoisseurs’ standards. And its form
has been historically less valued by the market than other
Liberty vane designs—like, say, the Cushing & White ex-
ample that sold last summer for $424,000.In fact,the last
time this particular Liberty form sold was four years ago
at Sotheby’s—for $65,725. This time, it carried an esti-
mate of $60,000 to $90,000 (roughly one-tenth the esti-
mate of the Howard vane’s 16 years ago).Before the sale,
Christie’s Americana specialist Margot Rosenberg had
speculated that, if it really took off, it might top out at
$200,000 or $250,000, max.
But who can predict what will happen when an ob-
ject gets under the skin of two determined bidders going
at it in the heady winds of the auction room?
TheGoddessofLiberty(est.$60,000–$90,000) settheworld
auctionrecordforaweathervaneatChristie’s,making$1.08
million.“Herflagwaswavingforme,”saidbuyerStephenScore.
A Gusty Market for American Weathervanes
AllCollector’sEyeimagescourtesyCollectionofEugeneandCarolynHecht;GoddessofLibertycourtesyChristie'sImages,Inc.
continued on page 2
Æ
CONTENTS
Buying Smart:
American Weathervanes 1
A Closer Look 1
Collector’s Eye:
George Ohr Pottery 1
Upcoming Sales 9
MarketWatch 10
PURSUING PASSIONS AND PROFITS IN ART, ANTIQUES AND COLLECTIBLES JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 1
COLLECTOR’S EYE
George Ohr Pottery
A Closer Look
Auction season
2006 has bolted
out of the gate. This
year, the annual
Barrett-Jackson
car auction, a well-oiled machine
if there ever was one, moved more
than 1,100 vintage wheels, for an
astounding total of $100+ million.
Highlights ranged from rare con-
cept cars like the 1954 Pontiac
Bonneville Motorama designed by
GM legend Harley Earl ($3.3 mil-
lion) to a 1970 Chevelle LS con-
vertible that brought $1.1 million,
probably twice its market value.
Other vintage auto auctions
totaled some $60 million the
same weekend. Vrrrroooom!
In New York, Americana week
launched brilliantly with Christie's
Blair collection sale yanking in the
highest total for a single-owner
Americana collection. Records fell
at Christie’s for weathervanes (a
Goddess of Liberty: $1 million)
and American portraiture (a
Charles Willson Peale’s George
Washington: $21 million).
Sotheby's set a record for a set of
U.S. chairs ($2.1 million). The big
disappointment of the month? A
Michelangelo drawing tanked at
Christie's. Look for more auction
details on my blog, www.artmar-
ketinsider.com. -M.S.
D
elicate. Exuberant. Graceful. Whimsical. Flamboyant. Luminous. Sensual.
These were the words swirling around my brain after I had spent the af-
ternoon visiting Gene Hecht and his collection of several hundred George
Ohr pots. I had seen an occasional piece by the visionary and wildly innovative
turn-of-the-century ceramist, the so-called “mad potter of Biloxi.” But nothing
quite prepared me for the squiggly,scrunchy,blotchy,drippy,luminous Ohr ma-
terial en masse. Hecht, a professor of physics at Adelphi University on Long Is-
land, has one of the three deepest collections of Ohr pottery in the country, and
the pots, scattered over every mantel, shelf, windowsill and tabletop, stand out
Ohr could crumple and fold clay in
a way that expressed a dynamic
tension and energy.
continued on page 5
www.forbescollector.com

2. 2 • January/February 2006 © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector
As long as people have needed to know which
way the wind blows, there have been weather-
vanes—two- or three-dimensional, individually
crafted or factory made, fashioned from wood or
metal (usually copper,but sometimes zinc or iron).
The heyday of vane production spanned the last
quarter of the 19th century into the first quarter of
the 20th. Most of those prized today are copper—
two sheets hand-hammered over a carved wooden
mold,soldered together,carefully filed and finished
with paint or gilding. They generally sell today for
low-four into mid-six figures, depending on size,
condition and quality of form and surface.
The weathervane market has matured along
with the wider folk art trade,which came of age in
the 1970s and ’80s.Twenty-five years ago,says vet-
eran dealer David Wheatcroft, “the harvesting of
weathervanes from the original building context
was maybe 10 to 20% done. Now it’s 98% done.
The universe is more defined: how many are out
there, what’s rare and what isn’t.” Also accelerat-
ing the market: the opening of several formative
folk art galleries and the development of a second-
ary market with pivotal auctions of important col-
lections, including those of Stewart Gregory
(1979), Don and Faye Walters (1986), Bernard
Barenholtz (1990) and Nina Fletcher Little (1994).
Longtime dealer Fred Giampietro remembers
when a mid-sized Howard “index” horse—espe-
cially admired for its elegance and grace—could be
had in the mid-1970s for between $1,800 and
$2,200.By the mid 1980s,they were up to $6,000 to
$7,000.Andbythelate’80s,theyjumpedto$25,000.
Todaytheybringbetween$80,000and$200,000.In-
deed,weathervane prices have soared in the last five
toeightyears.Onereason:theirintrinsiccharmand
spare sculptural quality appeal to modern eyes,
drawing numerous crossover collectors.
So, what makes a great vane? First and fore-
most, a striking sculptural form. As Stephen Score
advises,nothing “lumpen,heavy or with too much
ballast. You want things that can swirl and dance
andpoint inthesky.”Are the linesand proportions
awkward or graceful? How successfully has the
form been abstracted or stylized? Is there a sense of
balance? Movement? After all,they needed to spin.
Take the J. Howard vanes, considered by con-
noisseurs to be far and away the most sculpturally
elegant.Howard’s use of lighter-colored zinc in his
horses’ forequarters added to their look of refine-
ment. His horses’ beautifully tapered and propor-
tioned legs often draw comparison to classical
Greek or Chinese sculpture. Even though his
forms are wonderfully abstracted, a close look al-
ways reveals expressive details. The horse-and-
rider vane (right) has a figure who exudes dignity,
from his stove pipe hat to his puffed-out chest to
the snappy little stars on his spurs. His mount’s
spiky mane and rippling tail add visual verve.
Beyond Howard, though, no other maker re-
ally gets the market juices flowing.There are other
esteemed firms, like Harris, Fiske, A.L. Jewell,
Cushing & White. Jewell, for example, was known
for its Flying Weathervane, a horse with legs
tucked under, flying on a ball, a steeplechase or
through a hoop. Those run from $40,000 to
$200,000, depending on size, condition and rarity
of form. But it’s okay not to know the maker. The
fact is, these were industrial items. Patterns were
copied,borrowed and sold.Attribution is nice,but
it will never elevate a piece that doesn’t have “it.”
What connoisseurs do agree on is the impor-
tance of surface integrity.You want a vane in what
Wheatcroft calls “the most righteous weathered
state”—as original and untouched as possible.
Even though repainting or regilding may be a le-
gitimate part of a vane’s history, its presence will
diminish value. Says dealer Allan Katz, one reason
Howard vanes have some of the best patinas is that
the company was active in the 1850s and ’60s,sev-
eral decades before most other firms. “His vanes
had more time in the elements to develop these
beautiful surfaces.” What makes a surface desir-
able? Many connoisseurs like a patchy surface that
shows traces of all the materials as they age—the
copper, the gold and the sizing (a primer coat that
allowed the gilding to adhere to the shiny metal).
Others covet a rich, deep verdigris, the green-blue
patina that results from copper’s advanced oxida-
tion. Beware shiny gold leaf; better that the gold
shows a granulation betraying its exposure.
Honest evidence of exposure is important,
since these objects endured sun,wind,rain—even
target practice.Just not too much evidence.If a fig-
ure’s face was blown off by a bullet,disfiguring the
silhouette, a $150,000 example might plummet in
value to $25,000. Tails, ears, flags—anything that
extends beyond the main body of the form—are
vulnerable to breakage. According to Giampietro,
if the painted Liberty weathervane he bought last
summer for $424,000 were missing its flag, the
value would “drop to about $100,000.” Replace-
ment parts are a big no-no. Repairs are okay, says
Sotheby’s folk art expert Nancy Druckman, as
long as it’s the original piece being reattached.
What about rarity? The vast majority of
weathervanes featured eagles, horses and roosters.
Of the farm animals,cows appear more often than
dogs, rams or pigs. Christie’s recently sold a rare
and whimsical little squirrel for a whopping
$232,000.Figural designs range from Miss Liberty
to Indians, and the vehicle category includes
RECENT NOTABLE SALES
Folk art sculpture has been booming for the
past 5-8 years, from duck decoys to trade
signs. Weathervanes lead the pack.
$1,080,000
William Henis, gilt molded copper and
sheet-iron Goddess of Liberty
Christie’s, 2006
$770,000
J. Howard & Co., molded copper and
zinc horse and rider
Sotheby’s, 1990
$424,000
Cushing & White (attr.), Goddess of
Liberty, c.1865
Northeast Auctions, 2005
$365,500
Anonymous maker, Indian shooting a
bow and arrow
Northeast Auctions, 2003
(Sold in 1983 at Sotheby’s for $38,000)
$292,000
L.W. Cushing & Sons, molded copper
squirrel
Christie’s, 2002
$253,000
Molded copper centaur
Fairfield Auction, 2004
$237,000
Copper steam locomotive
Skinner, Inc., 2002
Riding high! At $770,000, this J. Howard horse and
rider, notable for its elegance and size (4 ft. long),
held the auction record for the last 16 years.
American Weathervanes
continued from page 1
With its graceful contours and patchy traces of gold
leaf, yellow sizing and blue-green verdigris, this leap-
ing stag recently sold for $85,000.
BUYING SMART
HorseandRidercourtesyStephenScore;FlyingStagcourtesyFredGiampietroAntiques&FolkArt

3. © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector January/February 2006 • 3
For advertising information, please contact Director of Advertising at 212-367-3372.

4. everything from early horse-drawn carriages and
fire pumpers to later cars, planes and even zep-
pelins. Rarity will boost value, but only if the vane
is otherwise desirable. Same for provenance. Best
to have one like Christie’s Liberty, pulled down
from its original architectural context. But that’s
icing on the cake—not a primary driver of value.
When objects become valuable, repros and
fakes follow. Second-generation vanes made from
the original molds were manufactured well into the
mid-20th century, and occasionally get passed off
as originals.But there are slight weight and stylistic
differences and construction tends to be cruder.
Giveaways: the newer ones are a little more reduc-
tive in form.Details are less crisp.They have a shal-
lower verdigris.And solder joints tend to be gloppy.
Outright fakes abound. Forgers recast vanes
using new molds made from old examples and
thenartificiallypatinatethem.But,saysDruckman,
there’salogictohowthesethingsageastheyareex-
posed to the elements. Would a surface that was
fully exposed to rain and sun still have a lot of its
gilding? Warning signs of fakery: when surface tex-
ture and patina are too consistent,or when the sol-
der seam looks green. (Solder is made of lead and
doesn’t patinate.) To see if a vane has been repati-
nated with acrylic paint, try wetting it. The copper
will absorb the water; the painted part won’t.
Looking for an affordable starter vane? A de-
cent running horse starts between $5,000 and
$15,000,an eagle between $3,500 and $25,000.Ex-
perts advise starting out with a common form that
has a great surface, so that you can study its nu-
ances and let it guide your eye.
There are also charming, lively vanes made of
wood,butexpectseriousconditionissues(cracking,
shrinkageandpaintloss)duetotheirexposure.Flat
sheet-iron vanes, simpler and more abstracted, can
also be good buys. But step carefully. In the mid
1990s, a raft of fakes polluted the market. Says Gi-
ampietro,“There are at least 100 fakes for every real
one.” Most authentic sheet-iron vanes range from
$1,000to$10,000.Butsomethingrare,liketheright
angel Gabriel,can reach into six figures.
Whatever you buy, it’s instructive to follow
Stephen Score’s advice: “Look for poetry and mys-
tery, for joy and grace. In the final analysis, those
make the difference in masterful pieces.Ӧfc
American Folk Art Museum, New York
www.folkartmuseum.org
Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, Vt.
www.shelburnemuseum.org
Collectors value this ram’s bold masculine profile
and blue-green patina. Many ewe vanes had horns
added in the’80s, since rams are more desirable.
WHERE TO SEE
AMERICAN WEATHERVANES
WHERE TO BUY
AMERICAN WEATHERVANES
Christie’s New York
www.christies.com
Sotheby’s New York
www.sothebys.com
Northeast Auctions, Portsmouth, N.H.
www.northeastauctions.com
Fred Giampietro Antiques & Folk Art
New Haven, Conn.
www.fredgiampietro.com
David Wheatcroft Antiques
Westborough, Mass.
www.davidwheatcroft.com
Stephen Score Inc., Boston, Mass.
617-227-9192
Alan Katz Americana, Woodbridge, Conn.
http://www.antiquesandfineart.com/deal
ers/about.cfm?id=99
Marguerite Riordan, Stonington, Conn.
860-535-2511
4 • January/February 2006 © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector
RamcourtesyFredGiampietroAntiques&FolkArt
Jean Michel Basquiat Untitled 1981-82 Oilstick, Crayon, Gouache on paper mounted on canvas 621/4 x 821/4 inches
PascaldeSartheFineArt .5620 NorthWilkinson Road .ParadiseValley,AZ 85253 U.S.A. T.480 905 0806 F.480 905 0809
ByAppointment Only .www.desarthe.com .info@desarthe.com

5. like red-haired, freckled children among their
blond, blue-eyed Arts & Crafts cousins. (Hecht
also has the country’s premier collection of Arts &
Crafts ceramic tiles, but I’ll have to save that for a
future story.) My adventure began with a high-
powered flashlight, which Hecht shined on the
pots so we could marvel at how, under the light,
the dark metallic glazes revealed complex,mottled
and richly colored depths. I held several in my
hand, running my fingers along the eggshell-thin
rims and placing them in the indentations made
by Ohr’s fingers when he had pinched the clay.No
other pottery makes you feel as viscerally con-
nected to the maker. It was utterly exhilarating.
Having started collecting in 1979, Hecht was
relatively early to the Ohr market. He applied his
scholar’s zeal to the little-known work, helping
to puzzle out and write its history. He has
penned several books on Ohr, and has been
heavily involved in the creation of the upcom-
ing Ohr-O’Keefe museum in Biloxi, Miss., de-
signed by Frank Gehry, an architect himself
known for swoopy, scrunchy forms.
What attracts you to Ohr’s pottery?
Ohr transcends all the potters of the Arts & Crafts
movement. He was a brilliantly creative sculptor,
50 or 60 years ahead of his time with his incredible
shapes and glazes. Unlike most potteries, which
worked with a limited repertoire of vessel forms,
Ohr created each piece as an original: “no two
alike!” I love how he continually pushed himself
to explore the limits of both form and surface.
One of the great aspects of collecting Ohr
pottery is that it elicits such a broad range of re-
sponses. It can make me agitated, give me a
chuckle,inspire a rush of excitement or a feeling of
the sublime. Sometimes he makes a joke: like
when he confounds expectation and turns up a
spout,or he makes a piece cockeyed,so that it lists.
Some pieces, with their delicate, defiantly imper-
fect forms,evince a very human vulnerability.And
some just exude this joyous energy. Every single
day as I walk around our house,his pottery uplifts
my spirits and makes me smile. I don’t know an-
other sculptor who elicits the same response.I am
thoroughly captivated. It’s a lifelong disease.
He was quite the eccentric, wasn’t he?
He really was. The guy was an indefatigable
showoff, having himself photographed in all dif-
ferent kinds of costumes, from Moses to Father
Time, or with his long moustache wrapped three
times around his ears. He was big on wordplay
and nicknames, calling himself “Pot-Ohr-E-
George” and the “Biloxi mud dauber.” His road-
side pottery and shop was plastered with his play-
fully boastful signs,hand-painted with legends like
“Unequaled! Unrivaled! Undisputed! Greatest art
potter in the world!” He made himself into a
roadside attraction in Biloxi, then a rapidly grow-
ing tourist destination on the Gulf Coast.
But he wasn’t just a rube folk potter with no
consciousness of the ceramic world at large. He
sent his works to fairs and shows, from Buffalo
to St. Louis to Paris. He promoted himself to the
press, and was written up in numerous periodi-
cals. He even donated eight pieces to the Smith-
sonian. He worked during the early years of the
Arts & Crafts movement, a hugely fertile time
for American ceramics, and at one point, took a
two-year journey through 16 states, visiting all
the major pottery centers to see what was being
made and what was selling.
How many Ohr pots are out there?
When his pottery burned down in 1894,Ohr lost
some 10,000 pots. But after that, he began work-
ing with a ferocity, and really let it fly, creatively
speaking, until he pretty much stopped in 1907.
While he sold trinkets and utilitarian pieces to
make ends meet, he didn’t like to part with his
art pottery, which he fondly called his “mud ba-
bies.” In fact, there was family lore that he went
around burying the pots for future generations
to dig up. He kept a huge proportion of his cre-
ations—tossing most in boxes in the attic of the
pottery, where they lingered for over six decades.
In the early 1970s, family members sold the
whole load to James Carpenter, a barber-turned-
antique dealer from New Jersey, for a grand total
of about $50,000. Nobody knows for sure how
many Carpenter brought North, probably 7,000
or 8,000. Of those, maybe 5,000 to 6,000 were
COLLECTOR’S EYE
GEORGE OHR POTTERY
Swirly handles and a luscious, multicolored glaze with
lots of red make this a signature Ohr vase.
continued from page 1
© Copyright 2005 • Forbes Collector January/February 2006 • 5
HOW TO
SPOT A FAKE OHR
In the latter part of his career,Ohr (1857-1918)
intentionally left his pots unglazed in order to
focus purely on form. But because the market
did not initially value these bisque works, be-
lieving them unfinished, one unscrupulous
seller had copycat glazes applied and tried to
pass them off as original Ohrs. The majority of
problem Ohrs fall into this glazed-after-the-fact
category. Ironically, today, such pots have little
value.According to pottery expert David Rago,
a scroddled bisque vase with strong manipula-
tions and a fake glaze might bring $300–$500.
Left alone, it would sell between $5,000 and
$10,000. We asked Rago to give us a few clues
on how to suss out the bogus Ohrs.
Flowing script signature. Most of Ohr’s later,
unglazed pots were marked on the bottom with
his flowing script signature. The glazed fakes
usually retain the original script, as opposed to
other kinds of marks.
Noschmutz. Ohr’s pots sat in an attic for 60-plus
years, gathering dust and mud dauber secre-
tions in their many nooks and crannies. The
fakes, fired in the 1970s, are spanking clean.
Dull, opaque finishes. The fake glazes are usually
poor renditions of Ohr’s lustrous,deeply glow-
ing finishes.And they show little to no subtlety
or sophistication when used in conjunction
with other glazes.You’ve got to become familiar
with the nuances of his surfaces.
Red glazes. These pots are disproportionately
covered in red glazes,which are easier to sell.It’s
the most popular—and rarest—of his colors.
Colored glazes over swirled clays. If Ohr ever
glazed scroddled (swirled, multi-tone) clay, he
did so with only a clear glaze.Some of the fakes
use colored glazes, through which you can see
the swirling tones of the clay.
Snakes. Snakes are a signature Ohr element,
and bogus pots have a disproportionate num-
ber of reptiles attached to them.
Clean bottoms. Ohr glazed the bottoms of over
95% of his pots. Early fakes have very clean,
unglazed bottoms. But forgers eventually
caught on.
Pinpoint stilt marks. Real Ohr pieces were fired
on long, thin Y-shaped stilts, whereas the fakes
were fired on pin stilts.If you see a script signa-
ture with a glazed bottom and pinpoint stilt
marks, be afraid. Be very afraid.

6. 6 • January/February 2006 © Copyright 2005 • Forbes Collector
glazed and the rest were unglazed bisque pieces.
TellmeaboutyourfirstOhracquisition.
It was 1979. I bought my first piece of Ohr be-
cause, well, I wanted a piece of Ohr. Oddly, I had
no particular affection for that piece. The pot felt
good in my hands. Turned out, I’d been suckered.
I found out from another collector named
Marty Shack that both the glaze and the applied
snake were fake.Shack,who lived two towns away
from me, had one of the two best Ohr collections
in the country.He was aware of the fake pieces be-
cause he’d bought a few himself. He’d been col-
lecting for a half dozen years before I got started.
We became fast friends and mentored each other.
So how did you proceed?
I realized that I had stumbled right into the mid-
dle of this big secret—that unglazed Ohr pots
were regularly being slathered with new glazes
and sold to unsuspecting buyers. The revelation
to me was that I had completely missed the im-
portant nuances of his work. I had been looking
at it for two years before I bought anything, try-
ing to study it, but it was tough going. First off,
there wasn’t much out there to see. Connois-
seurship in the field was undeveloped. Museums
didn’t show the stuff. The dealers were deaf,
dumb and blind. They weren’t going to bad-
mouth the goods. There hadn’t been any in-
depth scholarship. And the few books I found
had only lousy black-and-white photos.
So I jumped into the fray, and began trying
to figure out what work Ohr was doing in which
years. I looked at every pot that came through
Sotheby’s and Christie’s. I saw all the marks,
read all the literature and all the bits and pieces
of Ohr’s writing. I learned that he had used im-
pressed marks before 1898, which is the year he
began signing them in script. I correlated the
marks on the bottom of dated pieces to help es-
tablish a timeline for similarly marked, undated
pieces. Then I studied the photos of him sur-
rounded by pots in his pottery and at different
fairs to match pieces with those in the photos. If
a photo wasn’t dated, I would take other clues,
like counting the telephone wires and checking
the town records to see what year they were put
up. Or noting the shadows cast on the ground,
to figure out what time of year it was.
Wow. Sounds like quite a puzzle.
A fascinating one. But we’re slowly making sense
of the evidence.One of the big things I figured out
was when he stopped glazing things. I knew the
bisque was finished work before anyone else did.
So I went to James Carpenter and bought as much
as I could for $25,$30,$50.Carpenter had no idea
that these were completed pieces.
Howdoyoudecidewhattobuyandwhatnotto?
Part of it is budget. For years, I taught extra
courses at night and in the summer to buy these.
I will dig deep for a killer piece where I say to
myself, “he got it.” But another part of the equa-
tion is availability. I’Il see a superb piece once a
year, if I’m lucky.You have to take the buying op-
portunity when you get it. With Ohr, each pot
that comes on the market represents a once-in-a-
lifetime chance, because they’re all different.
There’s a piece available now that’s a good
representation of an extreme direction Ohr took,
but the form doesn’t quite work,it’s slightly awk-
ward. Still, it’s a strong, large, wonderful piece.
It’s as close to “getting there” as possible.If I were
wealthy,I’d plunk down the $85,000.I would buy
it for context,to better understand his artistic de-
velopment. But not having the loose capital to
buy the expensive “getting there” pieces, I’ll pass.
I have certainly bought pieces that I like, but
don’t love, because I could afford them and I am
an opportunist. In this increasingly heated mar-
ket, it’s getting tougher and tougher.
But I won’t buy just anything. He made a lot
of trinkets and souvenirs and everyday items like
planters and water jugs. And it’s clear he made
them with a range of decorative and artistic in-
vestment. I do have a few early pieces for con-
text—like an early molded pitcher, with a little
plaster-cast figure playing the flute, from 1892. It
was standardAmerican folk potter’s schtick,prob-
ably swiped from an English design. This is the
kind of thing he sold to make a living. And I have
a simple brown teapot that I’m sure was made for
a household in Biloxi. It’s monochrome, has little
indentations, and the spout is short and practical.
Not the great aesthetic adventure that some of his
other teapots would be, with crazy glazes, elon-
gated spouts, or even double spouts.
When he “gets it,” what do you see? What are
the primary drivers of value in this material?
There are a number of things that collectors have
come to associate with Ohr, signature elements
that drive up the value of a piece.
First is thinness of form. In order for him to
indent or twist or distort the pots,the walls had to
be thin. It’s a signature element, but with Ohr,
there are very few absolutes. He certainly made
some thicker forms.
Then there are his twists and distortions. A
piece that has a classic form with no twists is less
recognizably Ohr. He made indentations, then
twisted them so they collapsed, then compressed,
stretchedandsquiggledthem.Mostof hismanipu-
lationsaresymmetrical.What’sveryrarearetheex-
pressionistic ones, with asymmetrical twists, where
he twists with so much tension, vitality and angst.
There were maybe 100-200 pots that he manipu-
lated to that degree.I wish I had more of them.
Handles are also sought after, especially the
more sinuous and fanciful ones.You want them to
enhance both the shape and the expressiveness of
the pot. And, of course, there are snakes. Ohr
made amazing snakes—phantasmagorical crea-
tures, with eyes and facial expressions. I once tried
to make one, to see how he pleated them. It was
hard. A good snake adds value, which is why they
were so often added by the fakers.
What about color?
It’s a huge part of value. The vast majority of his
pieces are brown, green and black. Other colors,
like blue or gunmetal, involve more risk, more ef-
fort,more firing.He did crystalline gunmetals that
look like sandpaper and silky gunmetals that look
like mirrors. Rarest are the reds and pinks, espe-
cially the blistered pinks.
Sophisticated mixes of colors are most desir-
able.But you don’t evaluate a glaze by the number
of colors; it’s the statement,the complexity,the vi-
sual effect of splashing and dripping and spong-
ing. For a thousand dollars, you can buy a small,
Ohr enhances the sensuousness of this collapsing
vase form with a luscious cream-and-blue glaze,
with subtle green highlights.
WHERE TO BUY
Perrault-Rago Gallery/Rago Auctions
Lambertville, N.J.
www.ragoarts.com
Charles Cowles Gallery, New York
www.charlescowles.com
Jean Bragg, New Orleans, La.
www.jeanbraggantiques.com
WHERE TO BUY
GEORGE OHR POTS
The Mad Potter of Biloxi: The Art & Life of
George Ohr
By Garth Clark, Robert A. Ellison and
Eugene Hecht.
Abbeville Press, 1989
George Ohr, Art Potter: The Apostle of
Individuality
By Robert A. Ellison and Martin Eidelberg
Scala, scheduled for a May 2006 release
GEORGE OHR POTTERY:
A BOOKSHELF

7. © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector January/February 2006 • 7
simply shaped monochrome pot, with no com-
plexity of color. When you start talking subtleties
of the glaze—say,a red piece with splashes of blue
and yellow—you’re at 50 grand and up. As soon
as the thing starts to sing, it’s into the money.
What made his glazes so different?
Ohr is arguably the most innovative creator of su-
perb multicolor glazes the craft has ever known.
The sheer variety is extraordinary. Some are thin
and iridescent. Some are matte and silky. Some
are metallic. Others he created so they would
form bubbles when fired, which burst and made
little postules. The whirling cells look like the sur-
face of the sun. He stippled the glazes by putting
in pieces of ground metal,and you can see the tiny
metallic spot in the center of the cells. The glazes
were so complex and layered and wild. Nobody
was doing this stuff.I have a teapot with a brown-
ish reddish underglaze, with a blue haze on top. It
really lights up in the day time, with a blue shim-
mer. I have another piece where he glazed it com-
pletely differently on two sides, just for fun.
You also have a lot of the unglazed pieces.
I collected bisque ferociously. Early on in my col-
lecting, they were considered unfinished and
barely valued in the marketplace. It was oppor-
tunistic, really, because I was collecting on a shoe-
string and I could pick them up for peanuts.
I find each bisque piece so individually engag-
ing. He used a variety of clays that he had dug up
wherever he went—Florida, Atlanta, New Or-
leans. So the pots range in color from orange-red
to lavender to a really white white.He often mixed
the clays, scroddling them together to get a mar-
bleized effect of streaks and bands.
And the range of gestures and sculptural form
is mind-boggling. With the bisque, he really lets
loose, angsting the pots, exploring every permu-
tation of form. He flattened the clay into patterns
around the top lip, folding it like origami. He
twisted and pulled and crushed and yanked with
more intensity than ever before.
I like to group the bisque. There is a table in
the living room with five or six of them. I move
them around and construct little tableaux so that
they play off of each other in terms of size, shape
and clay coloration. It’s like creating a still life. It’s
fun to walk by and see the little groupings. They
give me so many spontaneous smiles.
What effect does condition has on value?
I do buy Ohr pots with chips because they are one
of a kind. A masterpiece with a defect is perfectly
desirable.You can be forgiving. But I won’t buy a
modest piece with a defect. There’s no sense.
What do you do to live with the pots and keep
them safe? I see you don’t dust them much!
I do occasionally wash them.I don’t hang pictures
above them. I have been slowly adhering the ones
that sit on narrow shelves with stickum stuff. But
the adhesive once chipped off a piece of a white
bisque, which can be brittle and quite fragile.
Thankfully, we’ve never broken one. We did have
a traumatic experience once, when a squirrel got
into the house,but fortunately we closed it up in a
bedroom. Can you imagine it running along the
mantel with all the Ohr pots?
Where do you buy? And where don’t you buy?
I buy mostly from David Rago, who has become
the primary source of Ohr material in the field.In
the past I bought a lot from Carpenter,from other
dealers, from the big auction houses. One thing I
can tell you: 95% of Ohrs on Ebay are fake.
How has the market changed since you began?
I remember in the 1980s, sticking $1,200 in my
boots and going to see David. We’d drink wine
and I’d buy pots.I could get three or four for that
amount.Availability is so slim these days, it’s rare
to have that kind of opportunity to choose from
several fine pieces in a retail environment. The
only time you see a selection is at Rago’s auctions.
And prices are curving steeply upward, especially
for the more complex, successful pieces. Nice lit-
tle bisque pots I bought for $30 in the early 1980s,
grapefruit-sized pieces with some charm and en-
ergy, are now worth between $1,000 and $5,000.
Twenty-five years ago, the very best pieces were
$2,000. Now they’re in the low six figures.
What’s your most valuable object?
I think the blue one with little wheat sprigs carved
into it that I lent to the Ohr museum. He felt it
was unique enough to hold it in his hand while
being photographed in front of a table full of pots.
It’s probably worth close to $200,000.It’s not ma-
nipulated in any way, but it’s very large and has
tremendous presence. The glaze is exquisite, a
flawless deep blue, gunmetal underneath, with
green highlights and a thin film that makes a rain-
bow on it. The glaze is perfect.
Ijusthavetoask:what’swiththeclaycello?
Throughout his career Ohr made all kinds of
funky, playful items, conversation pieces like mugs
with holes punched in them, tiny penny banks
pinched closed on top, clay conch shells and this
clay cello. I even have ceramic brothel tokens he
created,inspiredbyNewOrleans’red-lightdistrict.
Sounds like classic Ohr. Thanks.¶fc
Ohr, an inveterate showman, twisted his mous-
tache about as often as he did his pots.
Tall,two-colorbalustervasewitha
bulbousbaseandthin,curvingneck.
WhilelackingOhr’ssignaturemanipula-
tionsofform,thispotisthinlythrown,
elegantlyshapedandnicelyglazed.And
itshowshisschizophrenicside,withdif-
ferentcolorsondifferenthalvesofthepiece(indigoon
topandamottledredandgreenonthebottom).
SEPT.’05AUCTIONPRICE:$9,988.
GOOD, BETTER, BEST...
Medium-sized bulbous vase
with pinching in the body and
ruffling, scalloping at the rim,
with a speckled amber, gun
metal, and green glaze over a honey high glaze.
This potcamewithaletterandpoem,writtenby
Ohrtothewomanwhoboughtit.Whilethepiece
itselfiscertainlygood,withinterestingglazeand
manipulations,theaccompanyingdocumentation
bringsittoawholenewlevel.Smallnicksintherim.
SEPT.’05AUCTIONPRICE:$32,313.
Corsetedvasewithserpentinehan-
dles,high-glossblueglazewith
greenhighlights.OneofOhr’sbiggest
pots.Ahighlysuccessfuldesign,with
lively,well-integratedhandles.Carved
withawheatdesign,ithasagunmetal
glazeonbottomleadinguptoasupersilky,lustrous
blue.Yellowsunburstinthetrumpetaddsverve. Ohr
picturedholdingit.MARKETVALUE: $150,000.
Reglazed Ohr bowl with top
with dark glaze. Althoughthe
formismadebyOhr,it’sundistin-
guished,withnomanipulations.
Thebigproblemisthattheglazeisnot
his.Thegiveaways?Theglaze’sopacity,thescriptsig-
natureandtheunglazedbottom.MARKET
VALUE:afewhundreddollars.
GOOD
BETTER
BEST
AVOID

8. 8 • January/February 2006 © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector
Visit our NEW Web Blog,
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Your Backstage Pass to the Art World

9. © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector January/February 2006 • 9
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART (Sotheby’s, February 14-15)
LOT 186: John Emms, New Forest Foxhounds, 1898
DESCRIPTION: Oil on canvas, 41 x 62 inches • ESTIMATE: $800,000–$1.2 million
Emms made his name—and his living—immortalizing hounds, and this is his top dog picture to ever hit the market.
Why? The exceptional size. The existence of a key to the painting, with the name of each and every hound. The
picture’s freshness to market, coming directly from the family that commissioned it.And, not least, the artist’s ability to
capture the dignity and distinctive character of each of the 13 hounds. (He spent one-on-one time with each pooch in
his studio before painting them.) With the exception of a tiny area of inpainting on the lower framing edge, it’s in beau-
tiful condition. Emm’s top price to date: a smaller group of hounds, which sold for $708,000 in 2004.
AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN ART GLASS (Rago Auctions, February 10)
Upcoming Sales | What to Buy...and Why
LOT 1: Emile Gallé, Artistic Verre Parlant floriform vase, late 1890s
DESCRIPTION: Floriform cameo vase, 7-1/2 inches H • ESTIMATE: $15,000–$20,000
Organic form. Rich blood-red and orange-yellow coloration. Traces of opalescence.A verse of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry engraved
on the surface.All in all, art nouveau glass in its prime. Emil Gallé is widely considered the granddaddy of the art glass
movement (glass made as sculpture, and not just as functional vessels), but the majority (85-90%) of Gallé that comes to market is
more commercial work work made from molds after his death in 1904. This one-off piece was likely free-blown by the master himself.
A similar piece sold in Paris, in the mid 1980s, for close to $10,000.Artistic Gallé can sell up into six figures, but those pieces are usu-
ally larger and far more complex, with carved or applied glass.
LOT 240: Maud Earl, A Wee Free
DESCRIPTION: Colored chalk and pastel on paper, 13-3/4 x 10 inches • ESTIMATE: $1,500–$2,000
She was patronized by royal dog fanciers like Britain’s King Edward VII.And her pictures of domestic and sporting dogs were exhibited
and reproduced widely in England and Europe. Earl’s post-1900 works are the more sought after; this is probably
from the teens. Pastel is a particularly difficult medium to work in, and in this one, Earl amply captures the Westie’s character.A fine
quality work by a well regarded artist in the field whose oil paintings reach the mid five figures but whose works on paper are extremely
rare to the market.
TOP LOT
LOT 102: CharlesSchneider,LeVerreFrançaisvase
DESCRIPTION: Etched and enameled glass, 15 inches H• ESTIMATE: $2,500–$3,500
Big, colorful and impressive. No wonder Schneider glass, a French Art Deco line made in the 1920s and ’30s by Charles
and Ernest Schneider, was always so popular with American collectors. This is a quintessential example: decorated with snails (très
French) on trailing branches in autumnal colors ranging from brown to orange to mottled lemon-yellow. This example was marked
with a cane of glass, a sign of one of the better Verre Français pieces. (Most have only an engraved mark.) Because these were mold-
made and industrially finished, they have always been relatively affordable, selling in the $1,000 to $2,000 range. Lately, prices have
jumped to the $3,000 to $4,000 range and big, colorful pieces like this one, in great condition, are becoming increasingly rare.
TOP LOT
LOT 81: Emmanuel Sougez,La Soie,c.1935
DESCRIPTION: Warm-toned, 14-3/8 x 9-7/8 inches • ESTIMATE: $3,000–$5,000
It might be an outtake from a French 1930s fashion shoot.Or an ad for a silk company.Or just an artist playing with the
fabulous iridescence of fabric.Okay,so Emmanuel Sougez never quite made it into the pantheon of 20th-century photographers.But with
an image as striking as this one,it matters not.Sougez was both a commercial photographer and an artist,co-founder of a French photo
movement called Photographie Pure which,like the American Group f64,wanted to break from soft-focus Pictorialist style of photogra-
phy.Here,you see the silk rendered in crisp detail and lit just perfectly. While Sougez’s auction record is $15,000 (also achieved at the
Jammes sale in 1999),most of his work sells for under $2,000.
LOT 6: Edward Steichen, The Pond—Moonlight, 1904
DESCRIPTION: Multiple gum bichromate print over platinum, signed and dated • ESTIMATE: $700,000–$1 million
A lush,bravura print of a classic soft-focus Pictorialist image,made by a master at the absolute peak of his artistic and technical
abilities.This is the star lot in a sale of major works being deaccessioned by the Metropolitan Museum,many hailing from
the important Gilman Paper Company collection.In this multiply printed image,Steichen has layered imagery onto the photo-
graph,giving it tremendous depth,weight and beauty.And rare? There are only two other known prints—one,already in the Met
and the other,at the Museum of Modern Art—each a slightly different interpretation of the same image.It has been a long time
since a Steichen of this magnitude has come up at auction.His record price ($402,412) was achieved for In Memoriam,in Octo-
ber 1999,in the Jammes sales.This will be a test of the pictorialist market.Condition exquisite.
TOP LOT
HIDDEN GEM
DOGS IN ART (Bonhams New York, February 14)
HIDDEN GEM
HIDDEN GEM

10. 10 • January/February 2006 © Copyright 2006 • Forbes Collector
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MARKETWATCH: RECENT NOTABLE SALES YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT
COLLECTORÆ
Item Where Sold Sale Date Price Estimate/Price Fetched
AMERICAN PAINTING
Charles Willson Peale, George Washington at Princeton, 1779 Christie’s 1/06 $10 –$15 million/$21.3 million
BUZZ: If any American portrait’s going to break the record, it makes sense that it would be big George—in this case, eight full feet of
him shown as commander of the Continental army. One of eight full-length Washington portraits painted by Peale, it’s the only one
known that’s not in a museum. It more than doubled the previous auction record for an American portrait ($8.1 million), set only
last November at Sotheby’s by a half-length Washington portrait by Gilbert Stuart. This picture hailed from the highly esteemed Blair
collection, the highest selling single-owner cache of Americana ever to appear at auction.
SPORTS MEMORABILIA
1941 Heisman trophy Lelands.com 12/05 reserve $50,000/$395,240
BUZZ: Bruce “Boo” Smith received the seventh Heisman trophy (the coveted prize for top college football player) on December 9,
1941, just two days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The legendary halfback led the University of Minnesota Gophers to two
straight undefeated national championships in 1940 and ’41. Some 20 bidders vied for his Heisman, the fourth ever to hit the auction
block in the award’s 70-year history. It surpassed the previous record of $328,110 for Larry Kelley’s (the second ever given) and O.J.
Simpson’s ($230,000). More Heisman hoopla: the original 1935 plaster cast of the trophy just sold at Sotheby’s for $228,000.
RARE COINS
1885Tradedollar HeritageAuctions 1/06 privatesale/$3.3million
BUZZ: Images of Miss Liberty are bringing in the big bucks this month—most recently, in the form of a million-dollar weather-
vane (see page 1) and, on January 11, in the form of a rare coin. The latter was one of only five 1885 Trade Dollars made by the
U.S. mint for use in international commerce. The rare, legendary coin had serious provenance, having been in the collection of
Baltimore banker Louis E. Eliasberg (a.k.a “the King of Coins”), the only collector ever to have assembled a complete grouping
of U.S. coins. It sold for $907,500 in 1997 and for $1.5 million in 1999.
VINTAGE AUTOMOBILES
General Motors Futurliner“Parade of Progress”Tour Bus, 1950 Barrett-Jackson 1/06 no reserve/$4.3 million
BUZZ: Four million dollars for a bus? This nifty streamliner is one of 12 custom-built coaches designed to bring the GM “Mo-
torama” shows on the road in the 1940s and ’50s. Glinting in the sun as they glided into small-town America, they opened from the
side to reveal exhibits of everything from a cutaway jet engine to an automobile assembly line. Extensively restored, this is only one of
three still running. Second highest price ever for an American-made vehicle. The new owner plans to tour it for children’s charities.
For advertising information, please contact Director of Advertising at 212-367-3372.