The pottery of John O'Leary evokes in oneself, as the finest pottery always does, the intimate ties embracing man and his vessels. It is rooted in reverence for this timeless kinship. The discipline with which he has apparently attuned every nerve in his body to celebrating the symbiosis of man and pot has enabled him to undertake, with out self-consciousness or pretense, to do in the United States what Bernard Leech has done in England. The nonogenarian traced the power of English pottery back through the Tofts to grand pieces of medieval times and showed how they are related to the confident and serene elegance of Koreas ancient Koryo ware; and how an awareness of the relation could issue in pots definitely of this century and no other. Leech's work has been recognized; examples stand in the major collections of the world; he is K.C.B.E., queens Honored companion; Japan has bestowed its highest decorations.
Jack O'Leary works at something in every way as staggering. During his years at Sturbridge Village he made, upon request some of the finest pieces of colonial slipware I have ever seen - truly museum pieces. Yet this is the same potter who has steeped himself in the vibrant, richly natural; spontaneity born of year's of surrender to tradition that is the way of Nogouchi and Hamada. His work , let it be thoroughly understood , is no essay in either direction. It is, in fact, unlike anything else, and could be executed within the poles of either tradition because it issues from the point where they have been absorbed by a wholly modern mind. I think of Jack not as embodiment of the two different spirits but an entirely different third force. Ultimate artistic independence is only possible where one contemplates both a stout early American Jug and a cake plate of rich old oribe, no part of him ranking the two, but measuring them up simply as objects that may contain things for us and so well proclaim the fact that they give us pleasure whether standing altogether empty or full to the very brim.
Articulate as he is (for those attentive enough to fill in the omitted phrase, to follow an ostensible break in the thread of thought - and anyone who has seen, held and lived with his pottery cannot help but attend) Jack has steered clear of theory in the school sense. There is no faction in him; he is with no faction. This work preserves the lasting primitive embrace man shares with this earth.
Sometime ago, a close friend and fellow-collector asked to borrow a liver-colored decanter, one deeply marked here and there with black iron, to show to his teachers and friends. I refused with a quite preemptory no - which he understood - and loaned instead a kang ttsi peach-blow amphora of museum quality, spotted with pistachio-green and housed in its own box. The amphora had cost two hundred times the price of the other, and represented a great sacrifice for a teacher. The Decanter, however is John O'Leary at his best. I can if the amphora is lost or broken, at least visit places were its like are on view. But though I began collecting O'Leary in the early 60's, I have no reason to believe that there is anything even roughly like that decanter and I do not expect to see its sort again.
That is the effect Jack has when he is not effortlessly, it seems - throwing countless hanging planters or other very good ceramic merchandise. These individual pieces - which we hope more and more people will have a chance to know - eschew repetition not from restlessness or dissatisfaction but because he seems to work from a center in which creativity expresses itself in a constant flow of formal inventiveness. Now many of the finest potters, e.g. Hans Coper or Lucie Rie, have worked for years in a pure narrow range of shapes and glazes. Listening to Lucie, one knows for her, rigorous experiment will end only with her life. But certain colors and effects are simply her: egg yolk uranium yellow, for instance, or her use of potassium manganese. The Leech family and their disciples have similarly achieved and extraordinary expressiveness through a very narrow spectrum, One has the impression of an achieved resource totally exploited. This is their way and a very good one.
But Jack travels a less frequented path, or grows in a different way, In which the very glazes change and evolve, in which no perfection is dwelt upon, because resistless growth has already gone beyond it. A retrospective would show a body of work in which each piece basked in a genius of its own. The pots would be clearly the work of one man, but the unity is that of a personality. The are as ancient and as contemporary as of the oldest and the newest. No one can be familiar with the work of thousands of potter, but in my years of studying and collecting, I have seen nothing to unsettle my belief that Jack may be our greatest American potter.
Jack 
