Tom Turner (born 1945) American, 1990 Signed Unique Double Gourd Porcelain Vase. Red, white, orange, and bluish coloration with horizontal stripes below and vertical streaks around the top. The opening is very small, likely not meant to hold flowers. Signed three times on the top half below small protrusions and dated 1/90 below each one. Small potters mark like a sideways K inbetween each protrusion. 

Condition: Commensurate with age. 

Size: 10 x 10 x 13 in. 

Thomas “Tom” Turner was born on January 28th, 1945 in Morris, Illinois. He was first exposed to pottery in high school when he decided to take an art course in order to get an “easy” credit. Quickly hooked, he began to devote all his time to experimenting with a variety of materials and forms, and learned how to rewire an electric kiln in his junior year. In his senior year his art teacher, Joseph Corsello, helped him acquire a scholarship to Illinois State University, where he met and became a star pupil of professor James Wozniak. During the summer of 1965 he built his own home kiln from scratch, although only one of the pieces he made in it survived. In 1968 he graduated and began to pursue his graduate degree at the same school, building a second (vastly more successful) salt kiln in their art department, but he was drafted into the Army before he could even fire it. While in the military he was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina near Columbia, which introduced him to the rich history of the American folk potters of the southeastern United States. Turner wound up in Special Services and taught art for two years, working under a government contracted artist named Don Clark who helped him continue his education at Clemson University. Two more kilns he built are still intact in the area, one at the Columbia Museum of Art and the other at a small cottage he lived in near Lexington. In 1970 he met Harlan McClure while holding a show at the Greenville County Museum of Art; McClure was a Dean at Clemson who asked him to create a Ceramic Art program within the College of Architecture, Department of Visual Studies. The gas fired kiln he built there behind Wilson House became the source of some of his earliest triumphs, and led to a highly successful program at the college which lasted long after he resigned his position in 1976. In 1973 he obtained his MFA and bought property near Liberty, South Carolina where he established his own studio in an old barn, building a remarkable experimental salt kiln. In 1975 he began exploring porcelain, shifting away from salt glaze to fire glaze from that point onward, and earned a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission for his innovative work. In 1979 they moved to Lake Mary, Florida, where he dragged a large number of bricks from the experimental salt kiln to help build his next kiln, which became a regular activity in all future moves he undertook. In 1982 they moved to Akron, Ohio, where he bought new property and established Peachblow Pottery in 1985. He wound up working as an artist-instructor at numerous universities, and taught all over the country at craft schools such as Penland, Arrowmont, The Archie Bray Foundation, and workshops in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North and South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Louisiana, Washington D.C., Oregon, California, Colorado, Texas, New Jersey, and Michigan, over 125 in total. He left Peachblow in 2004 and moved to Mars Hill, North Carolina in 2005, where he established a new pottery and began to focus more and more on teaching instead of producing new products. For the next fifteen years he lived and worked primarily in the Carolinas, with major exhibitions of his work appearing in public and permanent displays at the Smithsonian Institution, and American Museum of Ceramic Art, the Zanesville Art Center, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan. In 2020 he moved back to his hometown of Morris and opened the Tom Turner Gallery, which he continues to operate and sell original works through.

Commensurate with age.