R. Guy Cowan was born into a family of potters of British origin living in East Liverpool, then the center of Ohio’ s thriving ceramic industry. Around 1900 he moved with his family to Syracuse, New York, where his father was the head decorator for the Onondaga Pottery Company. Shortly there after he was apprenticed at the company. He studied with Charles Binns at the New York State School of Clayworking and Ceramics, 1902–7. Cowan moved to Cleveland to teach ceramics at East Technical High School in 1908 and became acquainted with Horace Potter, who collaborated with him on early projects. In 1913 Cowan abandoned teaching to establish a commercial firm, the Cleveland Pottery and Tile Company, which was later incorporated as the Cowan Pottery Studio. His first significant recognition came when he was awarded a ceramics prize at the Art Institute of Chicago’s Annual Exhibition of Applied Art (1917). He exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1919–32) and began teaching ceramics at the Cleveland School of Art in 1923. Under encouragement from Alexander Blazys, Cowan started producing ceramic sculpture in the mid-1920s, launching the studio’s most fertile creative period. Many artists worked on collaborative projects at Cowan Pottery, including Waylande Gregory, Elmer Novotny, Viktor Schreckengost, Walter Sinz, Frank Wilcox, and Thelma Frazier Winter. After a period of commercial success, the Depression forced the studio into bankruptcy and it closed in 1931. Cowan subsequently worked for the Ferro Enamel Company in Cleveland as a research engineer. In the mid-1930s, he relocated to Syracuse, where he became art director of the Onondaga Pottery.
"Transformations in Cleveland Art" (CMA, 1996), p. 226