Owens Pottery Jar
name: label: maker
content: Owens Pottery
notes: label: Description
content: About the Arts and Crafts Movement:
label: Description
content: Beginning in England in the early 1880s, the Arts and Crafts movement spread across the United States and Europe by the late 1880s. It celebrated the importance of beauty in everyday objects and urged a reconnection to nearby nature. The movement resisted the way industrial mass production undermined artisan crafts and was inspired by the ideas of artisan William Morris and writer John Ruskin. Valuing hand-made objects using traditional materials, it was known for a color palette of earth tones. Its artistic principles replaced realistic, colorful, and three-dimensional designs with more abstract and simplified forms using subdued tones. Stylized plant forms and matte glazes echoed a shift to quiet restraint in household décor. The Arts and Crafts movement also embraced social ideals, including respect for skilled hand labor and concern for the quality of producers’ lives. The movement struggled with the tension between the cost of beautiful crafts and the limited number of households able to afford them. Some potters relied on practical products such as drain tiles to boost income or supported themselves with teaching or publications. Arts and Crafts influence extended to other endeavors, including furniture, such as Stickley’s Mission Style, and architecture, such as the Arts and Crafts bungalow, built widely across the United States. American Arts and Crafts pottery flourished between 1880 and the first World War, though several potteries continued in successful operation into the later 20th century.
label: Description
content: About Owens Pottery:
label: Description
content: Begun in Roseville, Ohio, in 1885, J. B. Owens Pottery was incorporated in 1891 and moved to an expanded Zanesville, Ohio, facility in 1892. Art pottery was produced starting in 1897 and emphasized slip-painted underglaze forms with flower, animal, and Native American decoration, in both matte and high-gloss glazes. At least six leading employees at Owens over the years went on to establish their own pottery firms. Owens Pottery was one of Zanesville’s big three rivals, including Weller and Roseville, and all three developed many, competing lines of ware. Owens Pottery's 1904 catalog lists eight hundred items (Koval and Koval 1993:128). The firm expanded into tile and continued successfully until 1928. Artware production ended in 1907.
label: Description
content: Kovel, Ralph and Terry Kovel, 1993. Kovels’ American Art Pottery: The Collector’s Guide to Makers, Marks and Factory Histories. New York: Crown Publishers.)
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Ohio, Zanesville
topic: label: Subject
content: Art Pottery
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Marcus Benjamin
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.379703
label: catalog number
content: 379703
label: accession number
content: 150313
objectType: label: Object Name
content: jar
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: polychrome (overall surface decoration color name)
label: Physical Description
content: ceramic (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 9 3/4 in x 12 1/2 in; 24.765 cm x 31.75 cm