Overview of Lotus Line of the Owens Pottery Company

The Lotus line was introduced by Owens in 1906, and production continued until the plants closed in 1907. It was quite similar to Utopian in that is was an under-glaze decoration, however the background colors were soft pastels in shades of gray, white, cream, etc.

Many of the designs were floral, however since Owens was deploying their best artists currently on-staff for this production, a wider range of themes is more common on Lotus than on Utopian. Frank Ferrell executed excellent decorations of swimming fish, and Charles Chilcote did a series of storks standing on a single leg, as well as birds in flight. Anna Best, Charles Fouts, and Walter Denney each contributed striking floral and plant decorations. It is worth noting that the Chilcote pieces with the stork standing on one leg appear with great frequency, he must have made hundreds of them with the same or similar design.

Several different glazes were used on Lotus aside from the commonly found high gloss. Owens advertised a matt glaze and a "parchment" glaze for Lotus. Many collectors and dealers tend to classify any Owens matt on pastel backgrounds which is not Alpine as Matt Lotus, which can easily lead to confusion.

Embossed Lotus is considered a separate line from Lotus in general due to the removal of the influence of the artist. Introduced in 1906, it had an embossed molded design on standardized pieces. Under-glaze slip colors are then applied over the embossed designs. Oddly enough, most of the Embossed Lotus used a background glaze of either black or white.