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Gehry’s Boy From Biloxi

Unheralded during his lifetime, ceramicist George Ohr later drew praise from museum curators (and Warhol and Johns) for his abstract expressionist teapots and vases. This week, several of his works from the Donald Hecht collection are up for auction.

Ohr, like many artists, was underappreciated in his time, meagerly supporting his family by making functional pottery, like pipes and flower pots, from mud he dug up in the nearby Tchoutacabouffa River. He had a prolific art pottery practice but chose to sell almost none of it. Photo: Detroit Photographic Co., public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Julie Brener Davich
July 27, 2025

A couple years ago, David Rago, of Rago Auctions, and David Leiber, of David Zwirner gallery, were having dinner at the Manhattan home of Laura Mattioli, the founder of the Center for Italian Modern Art, which shuttered last year after a decade in SoHo. She was displaying an eye-catching pairing of Giorgio Morandi paintings alongside ceramics by George Ohr, the late-blooming fin de siècle sculptor from the boondocks. Leiber, who was inspired by the combination, later re-created it in Zwirner’s booth at TEFAF New York: Zwirner supplied the Morandis; Rago, who has long been at the forefront of the Ohr market, supplied the ceramics. Priced at $15,000 to $150,000, about half of the 19 Ohr works sold.