Ben Owen PotteryBen Owen Pottery is not just a shop, but a legacy of 3 generations of potters dating back to the 1700’s. Ben Owen III, who recently turned 40, is enjoying a full flowering of life and career. His elegant original designs, springing from a folk artisan tradition that dates back to pre-Colonial times but draws heavily upon the influences of his own grandfather’s groundbreaking work blending traditional western folk pottery with Oriental masters, have won a wide international following and now grace important art museums, luxury hotels and corporate boardrooms around the world. Among other things, his creations have been used to help forge new cultural Though Ben is much too modest to say so, this kind of material success for Ben Owen Pottery means that as demand for his work grows among the ranks of ceramic collectors, more and more galleries clamor for his pieces, and larger and more intriguing private commissions come his way. On this particular mild afternoon, for example, Owen has just received a commission to make over 60 pieces for the new Bank of America-owned Ritz Carlton, soon to be constructed in Charlotte, his largest commission to date. Over by a window in his spacious studio sits a large, Oriental looking pot nearing completion — the base portion of a ceramic fountain that will soon grace a reflective garden at the Cancer Center at Randolph County Hospital. Owen’s keen sense of giving back has provided his signature pottery to everything from UNCTV auctions to fundraisers for his children’s school. His graceful creations have been used to raise money for everything from area hospitals and churches to helping cover the medical costs of a neighbor. “Obviously, I’m very grateful to have these opportunities to express my gratitude,” he explains as he continues making handles for the three remaining jugs. “But I like to think I’m simply helping preserve the history of this area by perpetuating a craft I was fortunate enough to learn directly from my grandfather — taking what has been passed along to me by others and building upon that. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the real story here.”
After 36 years with the Busbees, in 1959, Owen opened his own shop south of Seagrove. He took to signing his beautiful pots “Ben Owen Master Potter,” a title he’d earned at the 1928 Dogwood Festival. In 1972, owing to declining health, however, the senior Owen closed his Old Plank Road Pottery Shop. In a major way, he had helped create the vibrant community of area potters known worldwide for their distinctive earthen wares. “Around 1977, when I was about 8 years old,” remembers the legendary potter’s grandson, “my grandfather began taking me to his old pottery shop, really just to play with the clay, little more than making mud pies.” But something in the clay spoke to “young Ben.” The following year, the elder Owen began showing his grandson how to throw a pot on the traditional potter’s wheel. “The many hours I spent with my grandfather really came to shape my life,” says Ben III. “Among the many things he told me was that it’s easy to make things complicated but hard to keep them simple. I’ve always used that as sort of a guiding principle of my life and work. No matter what comes along, I try to keep things simple and in perspective.” When young Ben’s interest in following in the family tradition became apparent, Ben Owen Jr. — who went by “Wade” Owen — decided to re-open his father’s Old Plank Road Pottery Shop, patching kilns and building new ones. After extensive work, the pottery shop re-opened in 1981, and the work of three generations of Ben Owen Pottery was offered for sale. Young Ben’s other love was tennis. After high school, he enrolled in Pfeiffer College to play on the tennis team but soon wound up teaching classes in pottery making, which in part paid for his tuition. “Teaching also began to help me think about what I really wanted to do in life,” he says. After two years at Pfeiffer, Owen transferred to Sandhills Community College and managed his father’s pottery business. “I’m forever appreciative for Buddy Spong at SCC (then dean of student life) because he strongly encouraged me while taking his public speaking class. Because of Buddy’s influence, I began speaking to garden clubs and other interested groups on the rich history of pottery making in this area. Buddy helped me understand how important it was to educate people on how pottery had evolved here. Even back in Donald Ross’ days,” Owen adds, “people could travel to Jugtown and purchase quality pottery for their homes.” At one point when he learned the Pinehurst resort was about to undergo a major renovation of its rooms, he was pleased to discover many of the ceramic lamps being discarded were actually his grandfather’s handiwork. “We were lucky to save one of them.” In 1989, Owen decided to strengthen his own academic credentials by enrolling in ceramic arts at East Carolina University, where he began to experiment with color and form and find his own distinctive direction as a potter. Upon earning his BFA in Ceramics in 1993, Owen was presented Outstanding Student awards in both the Ceramic Department and the School of Art. “For me, the creative process has always been about growing as an artist,” says Owen. “Ronald Reagan once said that every generation gets to the next level of success by standing on the shoulders of the previous generation. When I returned to Seagrove, I was blessed to have the solid foundation my father and grandfather had established. But that was really the beginning of a new direction for me.” During the summer of 1995, Owen made his first trip to Japan to participate in a A decade ago, Owen constructed a multi-purpose museum, studio, sales and display gallery on the site of his grandfather’s original Old Plank Road shop as Ben Owen Pottery. It showcased both this inherited legacy and his ever-expanding consciousness as a potter. Today, the handsome 5,000 square-foot facility houses both his grandfather’s original earth-floored potting shed and the airy, state-of-the-art work space where Ben III now has five different work stations. The facility also has 10 kilns (5 electric, 3 gas, 2 wood-fired) that permit him to produce a much larger volume of work. “One of the things I love to do is interact with people who come here to buy my pottery, to show them how it’s done,” he explains. “This adds a whole new layer of meaning, say, to a vase or a pot that someone buys to give as a wedding present if they can see where and how that clay vessel was made. Like my grandfather, I love meeting the people who buy what I make with my hands.” One year ago, another important moment in the evolution of a gifted potter occurred when Owen accompanied a delegation of business and community leaders from Moore County to China’s Hunan Province to help dedicate a memorial to Robert Hoyle Upchurch, a WWII Flying Tiger pilot from High Falls who went down during a combat mission 60 years ago. Villagers collected his remains and buried him with honors near a Ming Dynasty tower. Owen took along examples of his own work as gifts to his hosts and spent several weeks interacting with his counterparts in China and Japan on the return trip. “That trip was a real eye-opener and completed so much for me. I saw where so many of my grandfather’s influences originated — ideas about glazes and design that he incorporated into his work and, in turn, influenced mine. That trip really gave me great perspective and a renewed sense of purpose. It showed me a lot about the importance of community.” This expanded perspective is dramatically on display at the annual three-day Celebration of Seagrove Potters, a festival featuring approximately 60 of the region’s most celebrated potters and artists. Not only has a kind of Renaissance begun here —more students are studying pottery than I can ever recall — but there is a growing feeling of genuine fellowship with the Seagrove area’s potters. We understand that we’re all part of something very special.”
Ben Owen Pottery, 2199 S Pottery Hwy 705, Seagrove NC 27341 Tuesday thru Saturday 10am - 5 pm Phone: 910-464-2261
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The
line of potters that precedes Ben the Third winds back to the
middle 1700s when the first Owens were part of a western migration of settlers
who moved into the northern portions of what would eventually become Moore
County, attracted by the quality of the clay found there for making utilitarian
wares. In 1923, the family’s modern patriarch, the first Ben Owen, then 18, went
to work as the third potter hired at nearby Jugtown Pottery by Jacques and
Juliana Busbee, a pair of Raleigh artists broadly credited with saving the
dwindling art of making utilitarian salt-glazed pottery. The Busbees opened a
store in New York City that gave Moore County craftsmen like Owen a ready market
for their wares. Many years of working and traveling to museums in New York with
the Busbees inspired Owen to experiment with new styles and forms of ceramics.
He was particularly inspired by the unusual glazes and vibrant colors of the Far
East and began incorporating elements of Chinese designs he sketched from museum
pieces and brought home to his studio at Jugtown into his own traditional
Carolina pottery making.
As for the artist himself, continuity and personal growth remain the lynchpins
of his once and future identity as a Seagrove potter. “For me it’s about family
and clay”. “My children Avery, Juliana and Ben IV‚ whom we call ‘Ivey’ will come into the shop and play with the clay
much the way I once did at my grandfather’s shop. “Will one of them become a
potter?” He muses, then pauses and smiles, attaching a final slim handle to a
pot just before he turns the pot over and etches his name and the date into the
clay. Ben the Third answers his own soulful question. “It’s impossible to know,
I suppose. Right now my wife Lori Ann and I are just eager for them to be
children. They’re growing up with a lot of love and a lot of history around
them. I can’t help but feel something good is being passed along.”
