The year was 1912. The sidewalks were crowded with ladies wearing skirts and dresses and gentlemen wearing button-down shirts and dress pants. Back then, women and men would often wear fancy clothes. You would rarely ever see an automobile and if you did, it would most likely be a Model T. Amongst the crowded streets and sidewalks there was one young gentleman with a potential career in art and he decided that he would create a pottery company. This young man’s name was R. Guy Cowan. The R stood for Reginald, but for short, his parents would called him R. Guy. He opened his first pottery studio in Lakewood, Ohio.

My teacher at Grant Elementary in Lakewood, Ms. Bluemel, thought that Cowan Pottery would be an interesting subject for our yearly local history research project and documentary. That is why my class, with the help of the Executive Director of the Lakewood Historical Society, Mrs. Mazie Adams, is making a movie about Cowan Pottery.
All year long, my class and I interviewed people who were experts on Cowan Pottery. We interviewed a relative of a Cowan artist, authors of a book on Cowan Pottery, the current owner of the old Cowan buildings, and R. Guy Cowan’s grandson.
Mrs. Adams visited our classroom each week to help us research using books, old photos, and primary source documents that we could only touch while wearing gloves. We got to touch real Cowan Pottery and shards too.
We went on a couple of Cowan related field trips. First we went to the Western Reserve Historical Society to look up Cowan in the city directory and find locations on old maps. We also visited the Cowan Museum in the Rocky River Public Library. The curator of the museum, Mrs. Carol Jacobs, showed us around the Cowan exhibits and also showed us the world famous Jazz Bowl. The Jazz Bowl is a big, blue and black punch bowl that was originally made for Eleanor Roosevelt. Viktor Schreckengost made it while he worked for Cowan Pottery. It was his most famous Cowan Pottery creation and is popular for its design and character.
Cowan’s Lakewood studio was open until World War I when R. Guy Cowan helped with the war effort. When Cowan came back to the studio in 1917, the gas wells were dry. Therefore, in 1920, Cowan and his employees moved the company to Rocky River, Ohio. Back in Lakewood where the first Cowan Pottery opened, the potters used red clay, but when Cowan Pottery opened in Rocky River they used White English clay.
We learned that Cowan employed many talented artists including Viktor Schreckengost, Elsa Vick Shaw, Wayland Gregory, Paul Manship, and Edris Eckhardt. They produced beautiful vases, pots, bowls, and figurines. Some of the kids in my class even asked for Cowan Pottery for Christmas and their birthdays and have begun their own collections. When we are done gathering our information, we will write our script, narrate, and work together to edit the movie. With the help of our music teacher Mr. Hazlett we wrote our own music for the movie. It is a jazz song we named “Potters’ Piece.”

The Cowan Pottery Associates made us honorary junior members and gave us our own membership cards. We will show our movie at the Cowan Symposium on May 10. You can learn more about Cowan Pottery and the symposium by visiting the Rocky River Public Library web site, www.rrpl.org. Cowan Pottery remained open until 1931 when it closed due to the Depression. My class and I will always remember the story of Cowan Potter and the fun we had making a local history project about it.

Our class web site is www.lkwdpl.org/schools/elempath/discovery