MORRISON HECKSCHER: At this case, curator Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen is talking with Robert Ellison, who promised, as a gift, all the pottery in this mezzanine. George Ohr is one of his favorite potters.

ROBERT ELLISON: Well, he's an anomaly within this period. He did things that nobody did. At the time, everybody thought Ohr was, like, a joker and was trying to get attention, so they didn't take it seriously, and he had no followers to carry on; he didn't influence anybody. So… when he died, in a sense, his work died.

ALICE COONEY FRELINGHUYSEN: They're incredibly light, they're featherweight, very, very thinly potted… you can actually see where his fingers have punched in these pieces, twisted it, but highly controlled. It's extraordinary when you think of how thin these walls were; the control that he was able to achieve.

ROBERT ELLISON: Well, even his contemporaries had to admit he was a fantastic thrower, and they did like his glazes, but they thought he was torturing his forms.

ALICE COONEY FRELINGHUYSEN: It wasn't really until, what, the early 1970s that…

ROBERT ELLISON: … the early '70s. And at that time, contemporary potters started taking notice and so he had a degree of influence in the last quarter of the 20th century.

ALICE COONEY FRELINGHUYSEN: Contemporary artists, too, Jasper Johns and others were very…

ROBERT ELLISON: Yes, fine artists liked it, the potters liked it. He often said, well, you know, what I'm doing is something informed. And some day you'll appreciate it. And so it remained for a bunch of us in this last quarter of the 20th century to confirm that George Ohr actually knew what he was doing.