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BEN OWEN III (B. 1968) HAS MADE POTTERY FOR SALEsince he was 13 years old at the site where hisgrandfatherandfatherestablishedtheOldPlank

Road Pottery in the Seagrove area of Piedmont NorthCarolina in 1959. He worked at the wheel during highschool and in the early 1980s while in college. He pro-

ducedwork in the shapes, glazes and traditions of hisgrandfather. As he grew older andmore experiencedhe travelled in the US attending workshops and con-ferences. He also travelled abroad, to Japan, Aus-tralia, New Zealand and to Europe and recently toChina where he enlarged his experience while work-

Ben Owen IIIA Profile

Article byCharlotte Vestal Brown

Melon Egg Bases. 2004. Copper penny glaze, woodfired for four days in multi-chambered kiln. 12.5, 20, 28 cm/h.Private collection. Photo by Juan Villa.

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ing andvisitingwith local potters.Owen’s is an exem-plary story of a traditional craftsman who has suc-cessfully folded his academic training into hisworking life.From the beginning Owen’s work has exhibited a

noteworthy consistency. He is blessed with an abun-dance of talent and the well of his grandfather’sremarkable career, first as the master potter of Jug-town then as his own master at Plank Road. BenSenior’s understanding of form andhis knowledge ofceramic production originated in experience and fos-tered personal aesthetic values that have acted bothas a challenge and a resource for Ben III. He hasworked at the edge of this inherited aesthetic while amaturing personal vision has enabled him to exca-vate deeper and reach wider, all the while creatingwork that has been and is characterisedbyapure sim-plicity of formandapersonal glazepalette.His piecesexhibit a sure sense of proportion, of a proper andsound relationship of height to width and breadththat settles his pieces around apowerful fulcrum. Theglazes that he has developed have an inevitabilityabout them – that is each colour seems rigorously

matched to the form. The results are objects of har-mony and elegance whose near perfect relationshipscan only be described as classic.Ben III was able to translate the knowledge and

experience he had gained in his youth into a richlyexperimental period during and after college. Heeschewed the traditional clays and colours of theOwen tradition and worked at creating new formslike the ribbed and lobbed vessels that took their in-spiration from the cantaloupes and pumpkins of hisfamily’s garden.He turned to porcelain and other prepared clays,

carving and combing the surfaces. He substituted dif-ferent handles and lids for the more familiar onesfrom the traditional repertoire.Heexperimentedwithprepared colours that were sometimes applied byspraying as well as dipping. The intense oxblood orcopper reds that heused for someof his forms, like theChinese Blue or Jun wares of 13th century China andthe salt-glazes that clung to his clay bodies, intensi-fied the near perfectly proportioned shapes that herepeatedly threw at his wheel. The forms themselvesalso started to grow in scale.

Sung Jar. 2004. Stoneware, copper penny glaze, woodfiredfor four days in multi-chambered kiln. 86 x 45.5 x 45.5cm.Collection of the artist, photo by David Ramsey.

Edo Jar. 2005. Woodfired stoneware, natural ash glaze.40.5 x 20 cm. Collection of the artist.

Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 71 2008

Lacking neither confidence nor skill Owen never-theless has moved patiently. When he made thishugely overscaled egg vase that he glazed in a dense,flowing bright red he clearly had attained a kind ofapogee for hiswork in the language developed by hisgrandfather. This attainment did not last long be-cause it did not represent the aesthetic ideal that hasalways driven him.Owen’s aesthetic is derived from that of his grand-

father and from the traditions that have long charac-terised the diverse pottery producing community inthe Seagrove area. Ben Sr’s aestheticwas rooted in theuse of local clays andwoodfiring in a groundhog kilnthat hadbeenhabitual at least since the early 19th cen-tury. Lead and saltwere themeans for glazing aswellas decorating the wares. The pragmatic need to con-stantly produce usefulwareswas the backbone of thelocal pottery business. Ben Owen Sr along with a fewother potters introduced “artware” to the area in the1920s. The elder Owen’s particular production wasthe consequence of his talent, skill and long-livedrelationship with Juliana and Jacques Busbee, whointroduced him to Japanese Edo style pottery and

Han, Song and T’ang as well as Korean wares. TheBusbees appreciated the simplicity of these forms andtheir early Asian glazes and these were a near perfectmatch for the capacities and proclivities of Ben Sr’spottery making experience and the plain, undeco-rated functional wares then found in the area. Theresult was, of course, the justly famous Jugtownwares that Ben Sr produced and whose forms herefined over the years between 1925 – 1959. Thesewares andpractices are Ben III’s legacy.Ben III absorbed that legacy and drew on it in his

search for his particular voice and ‘voice’, of course,was his grandfather’s most profound gift. Hisgrandfather and his family taught him to value hispersonal vision and to adhere to that internal vision.This enabled him to learn and to evolve as a potterwithout loosing his confidence. Over the past 10years his work has never lost the strong threads ofclassical restraint and formal focus that comes frommaking a limited number of individually uniqueforms with increasing understanding and refine-ment just as his grandfather had done. The vesselhas beenOwen’s talisman.

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Chinese Red Egg Vase. 2000. Earthenware, oxidation leadglaze, copper red glaze. 71 x 38 cm. Collection of the GreggMuseum of Art & Design, NCSU. Gift of Louise Talley andfamily. Photo by David Ramsey.

T’ang Vase. 2007. Porcelain, Chinese blue glaze, wood fired,multiple firings. 81 x 43 x 43 cm. Collection of the UmsteadHotel, Cary, North Carolina. Photo by the artist.

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He has made vessels in hundreds of variations, inmany colours and surfaces and sizes. The otherguiding principle has been constant and thoughtfulexperimentation with clays, glazes and firing. BenIII never stopped using his grandfather’s woodfiredground hog kiln. The discipline of fire and woodand, at times, salt have led him to a new level ofattainment producing powerful and expressivelarge thrown vessels that can demand and be com-fortable in corporate and public spaces where theyexude a classical serenity derived from the vitalglowing colours and inherited life embedded inOwen’s process.

Working at this scale has alwaysbeen demanding and Owen hasexperimented systematically tominimisze and control the oppor-tunities for failure. Clay has been amajor consideration and now,coming full circle, he uses a mix-ture of local clays that have histori-cally been exciting to him and hislocal colleagues who have learntthe clays’s properties. He acquiresand prepares twoMitchfield clays,local stoneware clays named fortheir place of origin, and availablenearby. His forefathers used theseto create the distinctive salt-glazefinishes. He also digs a primarilykaolin type clay near Candor thatis 20 miles south of the studio, andanother local secondary kaolinfromCameron (also nearby) that issticky and is the glue that holds allthe other clays together.A filter press allows Owen to

prepare 300 pounds of clay inabout six to eight hours. A newaddition to his studio wasdesigned to include sheltered binsthat can store 30 tonnes of each ofthe newly dug clays until each isready to be ground to a powderandprepared for throwing.Owen uses his woodfired kiln to

produce his large pieces but healso has had to dealwith the inher-ent dangers of cracking in the largegreenware vessels. The traditionalanswer has been to bisque fire totemper the work but it is difficultto complete this process in a woodkiln with much success. He hasnow installed a gas-fired car kilnfor bisque firing that will accept apiece up to 51 centimetres in diam-

eter. The culmination of the process remains, how-ever,wood firing.At the same time, wood firing has come back into

favour because of its rich potential for creatingdynamic surfaces on the ware that is subjected to thevagaries of the kiln.Once salt and the accidents of kilndrips andkisseswere thewidely recognised results ofthat process. Now Owen, like a number of other pot-ters in the area, continue to test the limits of clay andheat, firing for long periods from 24 hours to fourdays, allowing thekiln toheat slowly, attainhigh tem-peratures and an accumulation ofwood ash, and thento cool down slowly, permitting the ash runs to

Sung Jar. 2007. Porcelain, Patina Green glaze, woodfired. 71 x 38 x 38 cm.Collection of the artist, photo by the artist.

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become the dominant decorationon a piece or such as his new cop-per green glaze, to permit a crys-talline surface to grow.This combination of production

strategies has enabled Owen tomake the work that is now beingsought for hotels, such as TheUmstead in Research TrianglePark in North Carolina and theRitz Carlton, Tokyo. Both loca-tions have used his large pieces tointroduce serenity and elegancethat is carried byhiswork as a con-sequence of his talent, his carefullyreasonedprocesses and 25years ofexperiencewith clay.At the heart of Owen’s work,

however, has been his ability tokeep a firmhold on the direction ofhis work. Whether large or smallhis bestwork represents anearper-fectmarriageof formandcolour, ofsurface and the adherence of thechosen glaze to the dense, earthybody that lies underneath. Thework has a timeless quality and aresilient beauty that epitomises hisgrandfather’s legacy.No voice speaks any louder or

with more warmth and authorityabout the nature of clay and itsproperties. The complex processthat results in the work is alwayshis own. Nature, whether in thelocal clays he chooses or the fireand air that meet in his kilns overthe work gives the vessels theirlife. This energy also challengesdeath. These forms originate in theearth and hold these polar oppo-sites in near perfect balance. Oneexperiences a profound pleasurethat is derived from the balancebetween the elegant surfaces and the powerful formsthat support halos and sunbursts, smouldering col-ours and crackles and, in the latest vessels, tiny pitswhere crystals seem to erode the clay.In these latest vessels, the new copper green crys-

talline works, Ben Owen III is throwing out a chal-lenge to his own vision. These crystals have thepotential to distract from the formal clarity of the ves-sel’s surfaces, characteristics that have always been ahallmark of Owen’s work. These crystals appear topit thepristine surface and thus the tightly articulatedprofile of the form itself. While the colour is abso-lutely delicious; cool and warm at once with hints of

peach andyellow that the intense blue/green triggersin the eye, themotionof a shifting surface stimulates adifferent kindof reaction and anew idea forms. Thesevessels are matte and the surfaces intensely tactile,endowing the forms with a presence that breaksdown the distance between the object and the viewer,interrupting the traditional serenity and balance ofthe forms. It will be immensely exciting to see wherethese large vessels and new surfaces lead this potteror,more accurately,where he pushes them.

Charlotte Vestal Brown, Hon AIA is the Director of GreggMuseumofArt&Design,NCSU.

Genie Bottles. 2006. . Stoneware, natural ash glaze, woodfired. 71 x 35.5 cmCollection of the Umstead Hotel, Cary, NC. Photo by the artist.