Friday, April 30th, 2021 | 9:00 AM to 10:0 AM

Presented by Bob Ammerman

This seminar discusses the beginning of art pottery, the Overbecks’ introduction, a brief description of each sister, the various categories of their ceramic work, other artistic endeavors, glazes and techniques representative of their skills, current prices and evaluation, difference of attitudes of the “local” residents vs national collectors, the lack of knowledge or exposure of today’s dealers, etc.

Bob Ammerman was reared on a farm near Cambridge City, home of the Overbecks, Bob has collected their pottery for over 50 years. He met and married his wife, Carol, while serving a ministry in Longmont, CO. Having degrees in Theology, Music Education and Performance, he was professor of music at St. Louis Christian College for 12 years. After a ministry, he took secular employment to avoid uprooting his family. In 2019 he retired as a City Letter Carrier in Louisville, KY. Bob’s family had many connections to the Overbeck Sisters. He was a personal friend of Kathleen Postle, author of Chronicle of the Overbeck Pottery, still the fundamental reference on the Overbecks. Some of his own pieces are pictured in that book. He led a symposium on Overbeck pottery and has had several public displays of his collection. Bob claims not to be an art pottery expert or degreed critic, just a long-time lover and collector of Overbeck.

Friday, April 30, 2021 | 10:15 AM to 11:15 AM

Presented by Bob Batchelor

So you think you know Rookwood Pottery? Marking the 140-year anniversary of its founding on the banks of the Ohio River, Rookwood is more than a legendary name in American art pottery, the company is an American success story. Historian and biographer Bob Batchelor has written a new, illustrated history of Rookwood, bringing new research and findings to light, along with 300+ images, illustrations, and photographs that brings Rookwood alive. Bring your questions, ideas, comments, and more to this fun-filled discussion of Rookwood’s 140-year history!

Bob Batchelor is a critically-acclaimed cultural historian and biographer. He has published books on Stan Lee, Bob Dylan, The Great Gatsby, Mad Men, and John Updike. His last book was The Bourbon King: The Life and Crimes of George Remus, Prohibition’s Evil Genius. Bob’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, as well as The National Geographic Channel, PBS Newshour, and NPR. He earned his doctorate in English Literature from the University of South Florida and teaches in the Media, Journalism & Film department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Bob’s next book Rookwood is an illustrated history of the company from pre-founding to the current day, mixing 300+ images with a vibrant historical narrative. The book provides an incisive examination of Rookwood’s 140-year legacy as one of America’s iconic potteries.

Friday, April 30, 2021 | 11:30 AM to 12:45 AM

Presented by Ulysses Grant Dietz

The Arts & Crafts movement was the parent of the Contemporary Craft movement, but had roots dating back to the Renaissance, and even antiquity. Thus, early in my 37-year career at the Newark Museum, I realized that I couldn’t divorce the museum’s historic art pottery collection from the rest of the 20th-century ceramics in its collections. That epiphany helped my understanding of art pottery as I prepared my first exhibition on art pottery to celebrate the Newark Museum’s 75th anniversary in 1984. At the same time, it informed my collecting of all 20th-century ceramics for the museum between 1984 and my retirement in 2017. The bottom line for me was that it was all modern, and it was all tied to the founding premise at Newark, a museum that had been ahead of the curve since 1909.

My talk will look at the ceramics collection at Newark, and explore the ways in which my thinking as a curator evolved over four decades of a shifting ceramic marketplace.

Ulysses Grant Dietz was Curator of Decorative Arts and Chief Curator at The Newark Museum for 37 years. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Yale in 1977, and his master of arts in American Material Culture from the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in 1980.

The curator of 114 exhibitions during his tenure, Mr. Dietz is particularly proud of his work on The Newark Museum’s 1885 Ballantine House, which was re-interpreted and restored in 1994. His first ceramics exhibition was The Newark Museum Collection of American Art Pottery of 1984. A quarter-century later he produced Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930 for the museum’s centennial. In 1997, Mr. Dietz was the project director for The Glitter & The Gold: Fashioning America’s Jewelry, the
first-ever exhibition and book on Newark’s once-vast jewelry industry. In 2003, Mr. Dietz published Great Pots: Contemporary Ceramics from Function to Fantasy, the first catalogue of the Museum’s studio pottery collection, which accompanied an exhibition of the same title. Additionally, Mr. Dietz has published numerous articles on decorative arts, as well as books on the Museum’s ceramics, 19th-century furniture, and jewelry collections.