The market has clearly outpaced museums and scholarship when it comes to appreciating the stoneware vessels of Claude Conover. The Ohioan’s prodigious output has resulted in twenty-first century interior designers acquiring them in batches at major auction houses for their ability to display on both hearth and the gallery floor. Conover studied at the Cleveland Institute of Art but was employed as a commercial designer for decades before teaching himself pottery in the late 1950s and embarking on it as a second career. His seven-day work schedule is legendary: from rolling slabs on Monday to finishing his sawtooth blade surface decorations on Sunday, and inserting a clear plastic flower frog to contain dried stalks or branches, Conover’s disciplined production resulted in six pots a week, 250 a year, and 3,500 by the time he retired in the 1980s.
He attained national distribution via major craft galleries including Joanne Rapp’s The Hand and the Spirit in Scottsdale, Arizona, but also sold directly to collectors via his self-produced catalogs. Although some of his earliest vessels are decorated with impressions from printing blocks, and occasionally Conover would produce a totemic vessel of stacked forms, there is an admirable uniformity to the vast majority of his work.
CAANHAL in stoneware. Made by Claude Conover, USA, c. 1970.
18.75" H
47.6cm H
SC877
Collection of Jon Mann