LAMBERTVILLE, N.J. – Rago will present an auction titled The Ellison Collection on Tuesday, February 28. This legacy event will showcase more than 140 ceramic works collected by Robert Ellison throughout his lifetime, tracing his personal history as a collector and researcher as well as the broader narrative arc of ceramics as a discipline. Absentee and Internet live bidding will be available through LiveAuctioneers.

The Ellison Collection will bring historic works of American, European, Post-war and contemporary ceramics to the market, including highlights from the Martin Brothers Pottery, Fulper Pottery, Union Porcelain Works, George E. Ohr and Peter Voulkos. Collectively, this special presentation explores the range and depth of Ellison’s fascination with the medium and is accompanied by a catalog featuring scholarly and personal essays from David Rago, Dr. Martin Eidelberg, Ellison’s wife Rosaire Appel, and his daughter Hillary Ellison.

“[Ellison]’s curiosity was boundless,” said Dr. Martin Eidelberg, “his universe expansive.” Credited with making major contributions to the scholarship of art pottery as a distinct field, Ellison followed his own eye and taste from being an amateur collector to a knowledgeable connoisseur who authored multiple books on the subject. Ellison’s daughter, Hillary, recalls early excursions to Brimfield Antique Flea Market, and her own bedroom being partially decorated with the fruits of her father’s labors. As time passed, he amassed hundreds of works; beginning in 2009, Ellison donated more than 600 pieces to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in what curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen described to the New York Times as “a transformative gift.” In 2021, many of these works were included in the exhibition Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics From the Robert A. Ellison Jr. Collection.

Ellison was especially instrumental in establishing the reputation of George E. Ohr, the “Mad Potter of Biloxi.” Ellison used his own photographs of Ohr’s works in his 2006 monograph George Ohr, Art Potter: The Apostle of Individuality. The Ellison collection sale will feature 20 works by Ohr from Ellison’s personal collection, including multiple Exceptional vases, an Exceptional and Tall pitcher estimated at $20,000-$30,000, and a ring bottle estimated at $12,000-$16,000.

Other exemplary works include several pieces from the Martin Brothers – a Tall Wally-bird tobacco jar, estimated at $45,000-$60,000; a second Wally-bird tobacco jar, estimated at $20,000-$30,000; a Snark creature jar estimated at $15,000-$20,000; and several Grotesque spoon warmers. Both Ohr and the Martin Brothers worked at the transition of the 19th century to the 20th, mingling humor and irreverence with distinct mastery of their craft.

“This present sale offers another glimpse of the fruits of passionate, informed collecting,” said David Rago, “and the dedication of five decades in pursuit of the rare and the beautiful.”

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