Peter Sohngen

EDUCATION

1958 BA English, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio

1962 MA English, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California

1969 MFA Ceramics, New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, Alfred, New York

PRIMARY WORK EXPERIENCE

1962-1966 English teacher, Robert College, Istanbul, Turkey

1969 – 2002 Associate Professor, ceramics, Memphis Academy of Art (Memphis College of Art), Memphis, Tennessee

Peter Sohngen is known for functional stoneware pottery. He has also worked in terra cotta creating a series of sculptures. The surfaces of the functional work are often decorated with quickly applied slip or slip-trailing. The fundamental result is classic thrown and wood fired pottery. Sohngen has raku fired throughout his career having created a corbeled arch raku kiln.

His education in clay began when he, “first learned to throw pots from a village potter in Turkey, and then as a potter’s apprentice in the salt glazing district of Germany.”[1]

Sohngen is an influential clay educator in Memphis, Tennessee. Two of his students are Dale Baucum and Agnes Stark.

[1] Peter Sohngen, Forrest Merrill/ Dane Cloutier Archive.