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The Ellison Collection

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Rago is honored to present The Ellison Collection on February 28th, featuring over 140 works from the collection of Robert A. Ellison, Jr.

An artist, collector, and champion of ceramics, Bob Ellison donated over 600 pieces to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in his lifetime, effectively transforming their holdings in American art pottery, late 19th and early 20th century European ceramics, and modern and contemporary works in clay. Accompanied by a print catalog, this curated sale traces Ellison's interests from early Dedham crackleware to groundbreaking sculptural work by Peter Voulkos, and tells the story of his collecting journey through essays by his wife, Rosaire Appel, his daughter, Hillary Ellison, David Rago, and Dr. Martin Eidelberg.

Bob Ellison: An Apostle of Individuality

by Dr. Martin Eidelberg

Bob Ellison painting in his New York studio

When my colleagues and I were working on the catalogue of Bob’s collection of American pottery for The Met, while discussing George Ohr, we came upon the subtitle of his book on Ohr: The Apostle of Individuality. Suddenly, as in a moment of divine inspiration, we all realized that this epithet suited Bob and used it as the title of our essay recounting the story of his life. He was indeed the apostle of individuality. I don’t remember him ever commenting on the wisdom of our choice, but I have a feeling that he would have been pleased. Certainly, it fit him to a “T.” Bob’s Texas background left a Western imprint on him. I saw him as a Hollywood cowboy—independent, strong, laconic. He did not conform to others’ norms, but I also discovered that there was a warm, empathetic streak that ran through him as well.

Bob was resolute in the projects he undertook; once started, he could not be stopped. Early on, Hugh Robertson’s sang-de-boeuf glazes caught his attention, and that led him to assemble a large collection of CKAW and Dedham vases with monochromatic glazes, in an amazing spectrum of colors and varied shapes. Moreover, once interested in Robertson’s sang-de-boeuf glazes, he extended his search to include French ceramists such as Ernest Chaplet and Adrien Dalpayrat who sought the rare dragon’s blood color. Bob’s curiosity was boundless, his universe expansive. 

Similarly, when he became interested in the ceramics of Charles Volkmar, he not only determined to write a book about him but also embraced many of the other barbotine decorators. The same occurred when he discovered Fulper Pottery, although he ultimately lost interest in that ware, whose predictable oeuvre, I think, was not that well-suited to Bob’s temperament. On the other hand, the ceramics of George Ohr proved to be a perfect match. Extravagant in their unorthodox colors and flamboyant shapes, they expressed a rebellious nature that appealed to Bob. His book on Ohr in 2006 and his 2020 exhibition, Shapes from Out of Nowhere (he really wanted the title to be “From Outta Nowhere”) were the manifestations of his deeply felt philosophy of artistic freedom as well as his sense of humor.

Ohr created his own personal mythology as the Mad Potter of Biloxi. His flowing beard and moustache, and his non-conventional artistic attire were only the exterior display of an interior mood. So too, Bob avoided the norms of a jacket-and-tie mentality, and when he did wear a tie, it was often one shaped like a fish. But it would be wrong to forget that Bob was also a very meticulous craftsman. The beautifully detailed furniture he fashioned, like the masterful photographs that he took of his collection, are the evidence of a man with carefully honed skills and focused goals.

When I first became aware of Bob in the late 1960s, he seemed a somewhat mysterious person. I saw him at fairs and antique shows, prowling from dealer to dealer, buying ceramics he packed into string bags that he carried over his shoulder. Although I had not seen his collection, I asked if he would consider lending to the Arts & Crafts show that I was co-curating at Princeton. He refused, explaining that his vases were too personal, and he didn’t want to be separated from them. The seeds of our friendship were planted in that conversation and blossomed over time as Bob became a more public person, open to those who were equally committed to the world of ceramics. He proved to be warm and outgoing, tough on the exterior but inwardly gentle and kind, welcoming passionate conversations—especially if you agreed with his point of view. 

His generous donations to The Met stemmed from his earnest desire to educate the public about the achievements of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century potters. The rich overflow of vases coming up now at auction will, in effect, do the same. Like soldiers marching out into the world to educate us about the beauty of modern pottery, they also act as monuments to Bob’s courage and wisdom as a collector.  

George E. Ohr  Exceptional and Tall pitcher  $107,100  

American Ceramics

George E. Ohr, Exceptional vase

George E. Ohr

Exceptional vase

estimate: $20,000–30,000

result: $100,800

Karl Müller for Union Porcelain Works, Rare Century vase

Karl Müller for Union Porcelain Works

Rare Century vase

estimate: $20,000–30,000

result: $60,480

George P. Kendrick for Grueby Faience Company, Rare vase, model 88

George P. Kendrick for Grueby Faience Company

Rare vase, model 88

estimate: $12,000–16,000

result: $22,270

Mary Chase Perry for Pewabic Pottery, Early and Large vase with cyclamen leaves

Mary Chase Perry for Pewabic Pottery

Early and Large vase with cyclamen leaves

estimate: $10,000–15,000

result: $88,200

Bob's Collection: The Journey of a Lifetime

by Rosaire Appel

Bob Ellison and Rosaire Appel

“My hand just seemed to reach for it,” Bob said in an interview. For me this perfectly describes the kind of magnetic attraction ceramics had for him. He would see a pot before he knew he had seen it. And he was always on the lookout; it was second nature. Flea markets, yardies, estate sales, country auctions—I remember a barn sale, a huge, cavernous space. Coming in from the bright sun all I saw was a jumble of 'stuff' but Bob instantly spotted a ceramic pitcher on a high shelf as if it had a halo around it.

Until I met Bob I hadn't looked twice at ceramics. It’s not that I disliked them, they were simply invisible. My preferences were two-dimensional, often black and white and ink-oriented. Soon I recognized that ceramics is a language, an extremely enduring non-verbal language which has been used throughout the world since before recorded history right up through the present.

For Bob, the act of acquiring pieces was how he learned this language. He bought ceramics to learn about them, motivated as much by curiosity as taste. He surrounded himself with his acquisitions not as decorations, rather as reminders and references, objects to contemplate.

In the mid-eighties he branched out from just collecting ceramics to writing about and photographing them. This new stage began in the pre-digital environment. Bob was still using an early word processing contraption, and for photographs, film. His approach was hands-on, do it yourself, look it up, figure it out. He had high standards and second-rate results were unacceptable to him. But he liked research, not only in the field of ceramics and art, but cameras, photo equipment, lighting, and film. Decades earlier he had explored black and white abstract photography and had built himself a darkroom. But he was working in color now. He constructed photo tables and special light boxes, experimented with different backgrounds, color temperatures and types of film. Initially he scanned the film but eventually got a digital back for his medium format camera. The learning curve was steep but ultimately rewarding. His photographs are works of art in their own right. Photographing his collection gave Bob a deeper understanding of the pots. He could spend hours with a piece of Ohr, finding the sweet spot, setting up reflector cards and adjusting the lights to produce a perfect print.

Bob didn't just acknowledge things, he really studied them. His curiosity for and appreciation of ceramics took him to Europe many times and led him to unfamiliar ceramists as well as to celebrated ones. He was fortunate to have found such a sturdy, inexhaustible focus for his attention. He shared this through his articles, books and photographs and though generous donations to the Met. Now, in this sale, many pieces that inspired him are becoming available again to other collectors.

Martin Brothers Pottery  Tall Wally-bird tobacco jar  $100,800  

European Ceramics

Auguste Delaherche, Exceptional and Large vase

Auguste Delaherche

Exceptional and Large vase

estimate: $8,000–12,000

result: $16,380

Robert Wallace Martin for Martin Brothers Pottery, Wally-bird tobacco jar

Robert Wallace Martin for Martin Brothers Pottery

Wally-bird tobacco jar

estimate: $20,000–30,000

result: $23,940

Robert Wallace Martin for Martin Brothers Pottery, Snark creature jar

Robert Wallace Martin for Martin Brothers Pottery

Snark creature jar

estimate: $15,000–20,000

result: $25,200

Ernest Chaplet, Exceptional and Large vase

Ernest Chaplet

Exceptional and Large vase

estimate: $7,500–10,000

result: $8,820

My Dad, the Collector

by Hillary Ellison

Bob Ellison playing guitar with a young Hillary Ellison seated on his lap

Dad thought of himself as a hunter. Although his real hunting days had ended long ago as a young man in Fort Worth, Texas, the skills of patience, determination, single mindedness, and exacting precision were re-directed towards his other passions. Those who knew him knew that he was obsessively and constantly searching, often for an interesting bottle of wine, the perfect camera accessory, or the most subtle audio equipment. And of course, always, for pots. 

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of picking through antiques stores with my father while road- tripping in New England. This was in the early 1970s, pre-internet days when many sellers did not always know what they had and the term ‘Arts and Crafts’ was not widely in use. In the early days, Dad didn't really know much either. His first purchase was a charming blue and white crackle plate with bunnies hopping around the rim. He didn't know what it was but was instinctively drawn to it. He would later learn that it was by a Massachusetts maker called Dedham and he thought that perhaps being a Dedham collector might be a fun hobby and a worthy break from his life as an artist. As Dad’s interests expanded to Hugh Robertson (Dedham’s founder), Fulper, Grueby, and the like, the scholarship caught up to the moment and revealed what he had been buying. As he would say, "the cat was out of the bag, I was collecting art pottery." 

Dad was always on the hunt for pots and as I got a little older, we had more adventurous outings to the enormous Brimfield flea market. Up at dawn and armed with sandwiches and satchels, we would hit the market as early as possible so as not to miss the ‘good stuff.’ Dad's eagle eye would spot pots in the dark corners of the crowded booths. Every pot that caught his eye would be picked up, flipped over, and studied for a mark. The dealer would be interrogated at length and the haggling would begin. I was old enough to be able to wander a bit ahead or behind, searching for my own treasures as he closed the deal. Dad’s loft on Manhattan’s Lower East Side began to fill with pottery. Even the tiny nook that was my room when I visited him on school vacations housed some of his growing collection. To my delight, my shelves contained Fulper’s full repertoire of ballerinas, doll-like jars, and all sorts of brightly colored ceramic animals. 

In middle school, I joined him on a long summer trip to Paris. His interests had expanded to European ceramics, and he was focused on finding the most unusual glazes, forms, and textures, his artist's eye guiding him. In Paris, Dad also hunted for great cassoulet and couscous in little out-of-the-way restaurants. Although he didn't speak much French, he was persistent in trying to get his accent right for the words he did know. We went often to the Drouot auction house where he would bid for pots in his limited French and to the Marché aux Puces, where he had befriended many of the dealers. As with the first bunny plate, he would buy what he liked, then learn about it later. He was now an adept and diligent researcher, often digging deep for primary sources and tracking down distant relatives to interview, and I recall spending time at the Paris Archives Nationales with him while he researched his purchases. During this time, I had become adept at discerning between the French makers, like Ernest Chaplet and Auguste Delaherche, and to this day they are amongst my favorites. Many of the pieces he bought on this trip were donated to The Metropolitan Museum and were part of the show ‘Making Pottery Art: The Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection of French Ceramics (ca. 1880-1910).’

Dad’s collection was becoming about more than just pots; it was now full of concepts and ideas. He was no longer just hunting for trophies but was using collecting as a means to understand and contextualize the art form. He bought ceramics from all periods and cultures, both ancient and modern. His collecting had become a tool for learning, and he was voracious about it. This was the period when Dad shifted his focus from making his own art to researching, photographing, and writing about ceramics. 

What started out in 2008 as a gift of a few dozen of his best trophies to the American wing of The Met grew to more than 300 pieces, as Dad saw an opportunity for the pots to “educate others the way they had educated” him. Even after the pieces for the donation had been identified, he acquired new pots for the gift to fill gaps in the epic story of American ceramics that he wanted to tell. Underdogs were placed beside superstars and the strict guidelines that The Met employed were stretched as this narrative could not be confined within pre-set dates. The modern and contemporary work that comprised his third and last gift and show at The Met, ‘Shapes from out of Nowhere,’ told another story of ceramics: the development of abstraction with George Ohr as the founding father. With this gift, show, and book, Dad’s long journey through ceramics history concluded on a modern note. Throughout his life as a collector, he had followed the dramatic history of glaze development, the movement of shared forms and influences across continents and centuries, and the origins of nonrepresentation and abstraction through the nature-inspired shapes of the fin-de-siècle, to Ohr’s individual and unheralded achievements, and, ultimately, to Peter Voulkos’s ‘demolition of symmetry.’ 

With the satisfaction that these stories were now told through his books and donations, Dad was actively trying to stop buying pots. But they kept calling to him. He and I developed a routine of reviewing the latest auction catalogue together over the phone. He would encourage me to buy certain pieces that caught his eye, typically something rare and under-appreciated, an underdog. Occasionally, I would oblige, bidding cowardly online, never having gained his skill or nerve at live auctions. An opportunity arose to organize his shelves and I, acting as ‘inventory manager,’ would pull each piece out and set it in front of him on his photo table. With his muscle memory sharp, he would pick it up, flip it over, look at the mark, and exclaim, “Ah yeah, I remember that.” His mind was stunningly encyclopedic, and I was in awe as he recalled all the details of the particular pot’s purchase and its place in the ceramics continuum. We pulled out charming Dedham crackleware, exciting Hugh Robertson glazes, and the old Fulper friends that had been stored away as his attention moved elsewhere. We even found a small pot with a 25-cent sticker on it, a relic of the early days of finding treasures in unusual spots. “Ah, yeah, I remember that one, a yard sale find.”

In selecting the pots for this sale, we wrestled with how to choose. Ultimately, it became clear that this sale was really a story of Dad’s collecting. His life’s work. From the earliest purchases of a naive beginner to the bold acquisitions of an expert, the mundane, the trendy, the trophies, the unheralded, and the underdogs, all were relevant to his vision of ceramics as an art form and all these pots tell the story of Dad.

Peter Voulkos  Untitled (Plate)  $10,710  

Post War Ceramics

Maija Grotell, Tall vessel

Maija Grotell

Tall vessel

estimate: $6,000–9,000

result: $20,160

Rudy Autio, Vessel

Rudy Autio

Vessel

estimate: $2,500–3,500

result: $2,142

Gertrud and Otto Natzler, Cylindrical bowl

Gertrud and Otto Natzler

Cylindrical bowl

estimate: $2,500–3,500

result: $10,710

Edwin and Mary Scheier, Early and Tall chalice form

Edwin and Mary Scheier

Early and Tall chalice form

estimate: $3,000–4,000

result: $3,780

My Friend Bob

by David Rago

If you’re in the auction business, you make house calls. Consequently, during my 50+ years as a dealer and auctioneer in this field, I have been in more than my share of homes. If time permits, while waiting in a living room or other common area, I always make sure to look at the spines of books filling the shelves, or the edges of record albums and CDs. Dreams may be the window to one’s soul, but a glimpse at Jimi Hendrix or Gustav Mahler albums might be the next best thing.  

The same is true of the art people choose to collect. Glass buyers generally aren’t pottery people, and Grueby collectors are usually of a different breed than those gathering work by, say, George Ohr. It’s not just a matter of one’s eye, but at least as much of one’s intellect and temperament. Sometimes these categories are broadened by related work, like a Rookwood collector also buying ceramics mirrored by early Weller and Roseville. Or perhaps someone wishes to form an encyclopedic grouping of Arts and Crafts era art pottery, in which case an artist like Hugh Robertson might be a member of a larger ensemble. Such predilections say much about a client’s tastes and tendencies and have helped me over the years to both find what they want and open their eyes to the work of other artists or companies.

And then there's Bob Ellison.

The first time I met Bob was in my parents’ kitchen in 1973. I was an 18-year-old college student and part-time pottery dealer, and Bob had responded to an ad I ran in the Antiques Trader, which in the early days had a strong following for ceramics. I had no idea this brief meeting would mark the beginning of a fifty-year friendship.

Bob, it turned out, was an artist; I used to visit his 5th floor walk-up on Allen Street (I walked up those stairs a hundred times carrying boxes. I was much younger then…) and marvel at the shoes he wore when painting, the tops of them layered thick with a rainbow splatter of oils, not unlike his canvases. I can still see his studio walls, white spaces where the canvases had hung, “framed” by a technicolor halo of flung pigment. Abstract Expressionism was, to my teenage eye, truly abstract to the point of being unfathomable, though this proved to be only one of many things about which he would teach me. Our two-decade age difference was a lot to one so young, but the relationship slowly matured from paternal, to avuncular, to fraternal with each passing year.  

Bob Ellison and David Rago

Bob was not a normal collector, if such a thing ever existed. It’s important to remember that, early on, all of us operated in something of a void because so little information on American art pottery was available. We are presently spoiled by the hundreds of books and thousands of articles on the subject that have since been published, but in those early years of the revival of interest in the Arts and Crafts Movement, knowledge was usually hard won by trial and error. But, as I came to understand, one’s eye for art is at least partly genetic, and Bob was blessed with two of the best. 

While most early collectors focused ardently, if not entirely, on photo-realistic Rookwood, Bob tended towards the less literal Arts and Crafts-inspired ceramicists like George Ohr, Theophilus Brouwer, William Grueby, and the like. Further, while most early collectors were drawn only to American work of the period, Bob saw the connecting web between French and American makers such as August Delaherche and Grueby, Ernest Chaplet and Hugh Robertson, and the English brothers Martin and George Ohr. He also happened to buy some of the most beautiful Rookwood. Consequently, his was one of the few collections that took a more spherical approach to defining the ceramic arts of the era, and in far more depth than all but a handful.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the three separate donations he made to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan, beginning in 2009. The first grouping focused mostly on pre-war American ceramics, representing at the time the most important and thoughtfully curated collection on public view. His next gift was entirely of European ceramics of the same era, including masterworks by Chaplet, Guimard, Dalpayrat, and the Martin Brothers. His last donation captured the panoply of organic forms, American and European, from the 19th through the 21st centuries. Viewing all three collections would provide one a crash course in 20th century western ceramic history, and a window to Bob’s mind and soul.

One might think that, after giving away so much of his collection, there couldn’t be much left. One would be wrong. This present sale offers another glimpse of the fruits of passionate, informed collecting, and the dedication of five decades in pursuit of the rare and the beautiful. I had no idea, half a century ago in my parents’ kitchen, that I would continue my relationship with Bob, posthumously, by being entrusted with these beautiful objects. I offer them now with gratitude and humility. 

Martin Brothers Pottery  Vase with snakes  $13,100  

The Ellison Collection

Preview
20 – 28 February 2023
11 am – 4 pm daily
333 N. Main Street

Auction
28 February 2023
11 am eastern

For more information:
info@ragoarts.com
609 397 9374

Zsolnay  Vase with snails and flowers  $18,900  

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