Cowan Pottery

The Cowan Pottery Studios (1913-1931) were much more than simple artist studios. This was a laboratory for experimentation with glazes, forms, and the marketing of art craft-single works and sets of dinnerware were first developed here. R. Guy Cowan was a talented artist whose family had worked with ceramics for a generation before he came to teach in Cleveland and met Horace Potter with whom he worked early in his career. He opened the studio, and was joined by artists Elmer Novotny, Viktor Schreckengost, Frank Wilcox, and Thelma Frazier Winter and others who used it to develop their own work. Cowan's work won ceramic prizes especially through the 1920s. The Cowan Pottery Collection can be seen at the Cowan Pottery Museum, Rocky River Public Library. Treats, a restaurant in an old house near the library, also has a major collection.