“I think I wouldn’t be good as a teacher, as I don’t think there are that many who want the state of perfection that I do,” the ceramist Doyle Lane said in 1993. “But then I also say, ‘Why do it if you don’t do it to perfection?’” And oh the perfection of this man’s work. Lane was born in New Orleans in 1923 and went West in the late 1940s, studying ceramics at the University of Southern California and then settling in Los Angeles. A job as a glaze technician for L. H. Butcher and Co. gave Lane deep experience in the art of glazing, which he brought to his own creations and commissions. The humble Weed Pot—a small, orb-like vase with a tiny neck and opening, meant for holding a single dried sprig—was a theme on which he worked endless variations, almost as if each pot had its own unique ceramic skin. His large-scale murals, which he called “clay paintings,” are dimensional abstractions of shimmering color. Lane died in 2002, and interest in his oeuvre is growing fast. This exhibition at the Huntington, featuring more than 100 works from the 1950s through the 1980s, is the first major museum retrospective dedicated to the remarkable artist. —Laura Jacobs