The Roman Hubbell
Legacy Project

The Roman Hubbell Legacy Project is developing a durable record of the work and the contexts in which it was made, collected, and cared for.

Beginning with the family archive, the project will document objects and photographs, gather contributor-supplied provenance and memories, identify research questions, and prepare appropriate materials for public access. Descriptions distinguish documented information from family recollection, contributor accounts, and open questions.

Roman Dana Hubbell was an American ceramic artist and self-employed master potter whose life in clay extended from Southern California to Maui and Kauaʻi.

Born November 29, 1952, in San Bernardino, California, Roman developed his artistic identity at an early age. In the professional biography he used during his lifetime, he recalled receiving critical acclaim and professional honors at age seventeen through the Westwood–UCLA Sidewalk Art Festival. He identified the ceramic artist Jean Campbell as an important teacher and named Japanese potter Shōji Hamada and painter Jackson Pollock among his artistic influences. These details are preserved here as Roman's own account while the project continues to seek additional contemporary documentation.

An early exhibition flyer introduced him as the “Malibu Potter” and invited visitors to encounter “clay sculptured his way,” including chalices, drums, and fine porcelain. After his Southern California period, Roman established Hubbell Pottery in Haʻikū, Maui. His surviving business materials describe work hand-thrown and fired in Haʻikū, with layered glazes informed by T'ang- and Ming-era traditions. His practice crossed the boundaries between functional pottery, one-of-a-kind vessels, ceramic tile murals, large sculptural forms, wood sculpture, and objects made for sound and ritual.

Roman's place within Maui's Upcountry arts community was documented in Richard P. Wirtz's 1985 book Artists of Maui. The publication records his permanent island studio and illustrates the breadth of his work, including Lahaina Days, a four-by-eight-foot ceramic mural, and Metamorphosis, an eighteen-by-twelve-inch piece finished with an Albany Slip Rutile glaze. A separate 1991 account in Hubbell Family Notes documents visitors touring his Haʻikū workshop, seeing whale-decorated vases and other pottery, and purchasing porcelain wind chimes decorated with sand, stars, and whales.

Across his work, earth, fire, water, movement, and transformation repeatedly meet. Whales, waves, stars, organic forms, vivid glaze fields, and the physical memory of the wheel connect his pottery to the environments in which he lived. Surviving dated works currently extend from at least 1987 through 2010 and trace a practice that continued from Maui to Kauaʻi. Roman died on March 15, 2012, at Wilcox Memorial Hospital on Kauaʻi. He was fifty-nine and was survived by his sons, Jeremy and Jonathon.

Today, Roman's work survives in the family archive and in homes and collections beyond it. The Roman Hubbell Legacy Project is bringing those objects, photographs, writings, records, and firsthand accounts together so that the fuller arc of his life and practice can be preserved, studied, and shared.

Source and authority note: This biography combines Roman's own period biography and professional materials; the family archive and surviving works; published documentation including Richard P. Wirtz, Artists of Maui (1985), pp. 8–10, and Hubbell Family Notes (May 1991), p. 8; and the firsthand knowledge of Jeremy Scott Hubbell, Roman's surviving son and primary living family source. Jeremy's direct knowledge and family records are authoritative for family and personal history. Statements Roman made about his own training, recognition, and influences are identified as his account while independent corroboration continues.

I began this work because family knowledge, photographs, records, and objects can become harder to connect as time passes.

My role is to help steward what remains with care: preserve source materials, invite useful context from others, and avoid claiming more than the record can support. The project is personal to my family, but its purpose is broader: to create a responsible foundation for future research, conservation planning, exhibitions, and education about Roman Hubbell's work.