Politics and Abjection in Cornwall and Wallace Kirkpatrick’s Anna Pottery, 1859-1896
Speaker: Richard Mohr
Join us for the ZMA’s educational lecture series, ZMA Talks. Enjoy engaging speakers presenting on an exciting variety of topics.
To celebrate ZMA’s recent discovery of a rare snake jug from the Kirkpatrick Brothers’ Anna Pottery (southernmost, Illinois,1859-1896) in its permanent collection, Anna Pottery expert Richard Mohr will present an overview and interpretation of pottery’s wares focusing on its beguiling, large-scale, elaborately decorated snake jugs, pig flasks, and ‘directory’ wares. The traditional reading of the Anna Pottery is that its wares are Victorian in source, nature, and meaning, and espouse conservative social values. Building on his book Pottery, Politics, Art: George Ohr and the Brothers Kirkpatrick and taking into account the particular political contexts in which the works were made, Mohr argues just the opposite -- that the works, dwelling, as they do, on the intricacies and fraught dynamics of abjection and grotesquery, are ironic and espouse liberal, indeed, progressive political views, that far from being deadly serious, the works are riotous fun.
Richard D. Mohr is an academically trained author with wide journalistic experience and literary flair. Since 1993, he has been a frequent contributor to the Journal of the American Art Pottery Association with a special interest in American art tiles of the Arts & Crafts era. He is the author Pottery, Politics, Art: George Ohr and the Brothers Kirkpatrick (U. Illinois Press 2003) and the just-released book The Splendid Disarray of Beauty: The Boys, the Tiles, the Joy of Cathedral Oaks – A Study in Arts & Crafts Community (RIT Press, 2023). He is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and of the Classics at the University of Illinois-Urbana.
Stoneware, Salt-Glazed Temperance Jug Featuring Snakes by Anna Pottery, Circa 1880
Thursday, September 21, 6 pm, in the 2nd Floor ZMA Linn Auditorium. Free and open to the public. Registration required by September 20, 2023.
ZMA Talks are Generously supported by the Ohio Arts Council
