Ken Ferguson
Ken Ferguson had a lot to say, and he said it in a big way—through his art, in the classroom, and on a national stage. Raised in a small town near Indianapolis and schooled in art at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Tech and the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, Ferguson lived by the principles of hard work, straight talk, and pragmatism. But his imagination and curiosity opened the world before him.
Ferguson found a sensibility that resonated with his own in Bernard Leach’s seminal tome A Potter’s Book (1940). The English potter promoted an aesthetic based on utility, simple form, honest handling of materials, and ennobling humility. This aesthetic, also articulated in the writing of Soetsu Yanagi (1889–1961), a leading scholar of Japanese folk crafts, guided the course of ceramics for decades.1
Ferguson’s early work revealed the marriage of form and function. He worked on a domestic scale, throwing teapots, pitchers, bowls, plates, casseroles, and storage jars that feel good in the hands and fit well on kitchen shelves. The stoneware vessels are smooth and symmetrical. Ridged imprints of the potter’s fingers and casually applied glazes provide understated adornment.
Soon after his arrival in Kansas City in 1964, Ferguson discovered the encyclopedic ceramic collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. He was drawn, in particular, to the extraordinary Burnap collection of English ceramics and the vast collections of Chinese and Japanese ware. Throughout his tenure as chair of the ceramics department at the Kansas City Art Institute, he used the museum collection as an educational resource for his students and an inspiration for his own work. Many of his vessel forms have their origins here, as do images brushed onto or sgraffitoed into the clay.
Myths of creation, procreation, and sexuality infuse Ferguson’s sculptural and functional pots from this point onward: horned bulls are joined to udder pots, paired rabbits leap in unison over baskets, Adam and Eve come together on platters, seductive odalisques and mermaids display their curves. Somewhat later, even the clay takes up these metaphors. Pot bodies sag and slump, pour spouts droop, vessel lips thicken, surface imperfections abound and glazes drip frothy and thick. Ferguson declared these the pots he had been wanting to make, pots “that look like me.” His often-oversized pots of this period embody humanness with both sympathy and ironic wit.
Ken Ferguson had plenty to say and his pots are still speaking.
—Jan Schall
