The Roseville Pottery Company was an American art pottery manufacturer in the 19th and 20th centuries. Along with Rookwood Pottery and Weller Pottery, it was one of the three major art potteries located in Ohio around the turn of the 20th century. Though the company originally made simple household pieces, the Arts and Crafts–inspired designs proved popular, and Roseville pieces are now sought after by collectors.
The company was founded by J.F. Weaver in Roseville, Ohio, in 1890. It was incorporated in 1892 with George Young, a former Roseville salesman, as secretary and general manager. [1] Under the direction of Young, the Roseville company had great success producing stoneware flower pots and other practical household items. In 1895, the company expanded by purchasing Midland Pottery, and by 1896 George Young had amassed a controlling interest in Roseville Pottery. In 1898, they purchased the Clark Stoneware Company in Zanesville, and moved the headquarters there. [2]
In 1900 Young hired Ross C. Purdy to create the company's first art pottery line, named Rozane (a contraction of "Roseville" and "Zanesville"). [3] The Rozane line was designed to compete against Rookwood Pottery's Standard Glaze, Owens Pottery's Utopian, and Weller Pottery's Louwelsa art lines. By 1901, the company owned and operated four plants and employed 325 people.
Frederick Hurten Rhead was the art director of Roseville between 1904 and 1909. He is associated with the Della Robbia line, and he designed or oversaw the Juvenile, Donatello, Mostique and Pauleo lines. [4] [5] Frederick's brother Harry Rhead stayed on at Weller after Frederick left.
Frank Ferrell became the art director for Roseville in 1917 and was responsible for creating many popular Roseville designs. [1] Among Roseville's most popular designs are Blackberry, Sunflower, and Pinecone. [6]
The Roseville Pottery Company produced its final designs in 1953, and the following year their facilities were bought by the Mosaic Tile Company.
In 2017, a company named The Kings Fortune of Fishers, Indiana, was granted trademarks by the U.S. Patent Office for both Roseville and Roseville Pottery. [7] Marina Bosetti, a ceramic artist in Raleigh, North Carolina, has been contracted to produce limited-edition tiles in the Art Nouveau style for the company. [7]
Since the company closed in the 1950s, Roseville pottery has seen two distinct revivals: one with baby boomers in the 1970s, and again in the late 1990s and early 2000s during the Mission Style revival.
Today, many Roseville styles remain relatively common while rare pieces can fetch hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Because Roseville's designs were so influential, replicas and counterfeits are common, and the wide variety of kiln markings—or the lack thereof—on genuine pieces can be confusing for collectors. [2] [8]
| Apple Blossom | 1948 [5] | |||
| Artcraft | 1933 | |||
| Artwood | 1951 | |||
| Blackberry | 1932 | |||
| Bleeding Heart | 1938 [5] | |||
| Clematis | 1944 [5] | |||
| Dahlrose | 1924 [5] | |||
| Della Robbia | 1905 [5] | |||
| Dogwood | 1918 [5] | |||
| Egypto | 1905 [5] | |||
| Falline | 1933 | |||
| Freesia | 1945 [5] | |||
| Ferella | 1930 | |||
| Ixia | 1937 [5] | |||
| Foxglove | 1942 [5] | |||
| Futura | 1928 [5] | |||
| Laurel | 1934 [5] | |||
| Peony | 1942 [5] | |||
| Mara | 1905 | |||
| Magnolia | 1943 [5] | |||
| Mongol | 1905 [5] | |||
| Mostique | 1910 [5] | |||
| Olympic | 1905 | |||
| Pauleo | 1914 | |||
| Pinecone | 1931 [5] | |||
| Poppy | 1930 [5] | |||
| Rozane | 1900 [5] | |||
| Snowberry | 1946 [5] | |||
| Sunflower | 1930 | Tuscany 1928 | Vista (Forest) | 1920 |
| Water Lily | 1943 [5] | |||
| Woodland | 1905 | |||
| Zephyr Lily | 1946 [5] | |||
| Donatello | 1916 |
 |
Zanesville is a city in and the county seat of Muskingum County, Ohio, United States. Located at the confluence of the Licking and Muskingum rivers, the city is approximately 52 miles (84 km) east of Columbus and had a population of 24,765 as of the 2020 census, down from 25,487 as of the 2010 census. Historically the state capital of Ohio from 1810 to 1812, Zanesville anchors the Zanesville micropolitan area and is part of the greater Columbus-Marion-Zanesville combined statistical area.
Charlotte Rhead was an English ceramics designer active in the 1920s and the 1930s in the Potteries area of Staffordshire.
Frederick Hurten Rhead (1880–1942) was a ceramicist and a major figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. A native of England, worked as a potter in the United States for most of his career. In addition to teaching pottery techniques, Rhead was highly influential in both studio and commercial pottery. He worked for the Roseville Pottery, established his own Rhead Pottery (1913–1917), and in 1935 designed the highly successful Fiesta ware for Homer Laughlin China Company.
The Della Robbia Pottery was a ceramic factory founded in 1894 in Birkenhead, near Liverpool, England. It closed in 1906. Initially it mostly made large pieces with high artistic aspirations, especially relief panels for architectural use, but also ornamental vessels and plates, intended for display rather than use.
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era", an independent business from 1793 to 1968. It was a leader in ceramic design, working in a number of different ceramic bodies, decorative techniques, and "a glorious pot-pourri of styles - Rococo shapes with Oriental motifs, Classical shapes with Medieval designs and Art Nouveau borders were among the many wonderful concoctions". As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
Van Briggle Art Pottery was at the time of its demise the oldest continuously operating art pottery in the United States, having been established in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1901 by Artus and Anne Van Briggle. Artus had a significant impact on the Art Nouveau movement in the United States, and his pottery is foundational to American Art Pottery. The Art Nouveau style favored by its founders continues to influence the pottery's designs.
Hull pottery began production in 1905 in Crooksville, Ohio, under the leadership of Addis Emmet (A.E.) Hull. The Hull Pottery Company's early lines consisted of common utilitarian stoneware, semi-porcelain dinnerware and decorative tile. The company quickly established a firm market and enjoyed an excellent reputation for producing quality ceramics.
The Fiesta Tableware Company is a ceramics manufacturer located in Newell, West Virginia, United States. Established in 1871, it is widely known for its Art Deco glazed dinnerware line, Fiesta. In 2002, The New York Times called Fiesta "the most collected brand of china in the United States".
McCoy is a brand of pottery that was produced in the United States in the early 20th century. It is probably the most collected pottery in the nation. Starting in 1848 by J.W.McCoy Stoneware company, they established the Nelson McCoy Sanitary Stoneware Company in 1910. They continued on almost into 1991, but had to close down due to declining profits.
In 1872, Samuel A. Weller founded Weller Pottery in Fultonham, Ohio, United States. Originally, his business consisted of a small cabin and one beehive kiln, and Weller produced flower pots, bowls, crocks, and vases. By 1905, Weller Pottery was the largest pottery in the country. It mass-produced art pottery until about 1920, and it produced commercial lines until the pottery closed in 1948.
Dorchester Pottery Works is a historic site at 101-105 Victory Road in Dorchester, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston. The Dorchester Pottery Works was founded in 1895 by George Henderson and made stoneware. The Dorchester Pottery Works closed in 1979. The building was designated as a Boston Landmark in 1980 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Art pottery is a term for pottery with artistic aspirations, made in relatively small quantities, mostly between about 1870 and 1930. Typically, sets of the usual tableware items are excluded from the term; instead the objects produced are mostly decorative vessels such as vases, jugs, bowls and the like which are sold singly. The term originated in the later 19th century, and is usually used only for pottery produced from that period onwards. It tends to be used for ceramics produced in factory conditions, but in relatively small quantities, using skilled workers, with at the least close supervision by a designer or some sort of artistic director. Studio pottery is a step up, supposed to be produced in even smaller quantities, with the hands-on participation of an artist-potter, who often performs all or most of the production stages. But the use of both terms can be elastic. Ceramic art is often a much wider term, covering all pottery that comes within the scope of art history, but "ceramic artist" is often used for hands-on artist potters in studio pottery.
Arequipa Pottery was a type of Arts and Crafts style pottery produced in Marin County, California, in the United States from 1911 until 1918. Arequipa Pottery differs from many Arts and Crafts pottery businesses because it was produced as part of the therapy process for women recovering from tuberculosis in the San Francisco Bay Area. The pottery was also produced from local clay.
Rookwood Pottery is an American ceramics company that was founded in 1880 and closed in 1967, before being revived in 2004. It was initially located in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, and has now returned there. In its heyday from about 1890 to the 1929 Crash, it was an important manufacturer, mostly of decorative American art pottery made in several fashionable styles and types of pieces.
Franciscan Ceramics are ceramic tableware and tile products produced by Gladding, McBean & Co. in Los Angeles, California, US from 1934 to 1962, International Pipe and Ceramics (Interpace) from 1962 to 1979, and Wedgwood from 1979 to 1983. Wedgwood closed the Los Angeles plant, and moved the production of dinnerware to England in 1983. Waterford Glass Group plc purchased Wedgwood in 1986, becoming Waterford Wedgwood. KPS Capital Partners acquired all of the holdings of Waterford Wedgwood in 2009. The Franciscan brand became part of a group of companies known as WWRD, an acronym for "Wedgwood Waterford Royal Doulton." WWRD continues to produce the Franciscan patterns Desert Rose and Apple.
The Shawnee Pottery Company was a manufacturing company best known for producing Corn King pottery and the Pennsylvania Dutch lines of pottery. Both of these lines are considered to be highly collectible.
Shelley Potteries, situated in Staffordshire, was earlier known as Wileman & Co. which had also traded as The Foley Potteries. The first Shelley to join the company was Joseph Ball Shelley in 1862 and in 1896 his son Percy Shelley became the sole proprietor, after which it remained a Shelley family business until 1966 when it was taken over by Allied English Potteries. Its china and earthenware products were many and varied although the major output was table ware. In the late Victorian period the Art Nouveau style pottery and Intarsio ranges designed by art director Frederick Alfred Rhead were extremely popular but Shelley is probably best known for its fine bone china “Art Deco” ware of the inter-war years and post-war fashionable tea ware.
Samuel Augustus Weller, one of the pioneer pottery manufacturers of Ohio in the United States, founded the S.A. Weller Pottery in Fultonham, Ohio, in 1872. In 1882 he moved the business to Zanesville, Ohio, and for more than a half-century Weller Pottery produced both utilitarian pieces and more decorative art pottery lines.
American art pottery refers to aesthetically distinctive hand-made ceramics in earthenware and stoneware from the period 1870-1950s. Ranging from tall vases to tiles, the work features original designs, simplified shapes, and experimental glazes and painting techniques. Stylistically, most of this work is affiliated with the modernizing Arts and Crafts (1880-1910), Art Nouveau (1890–1910), or Art Deco (1920s) movements, and also European art pottery.
The J. B. Owens Pottery Company, informally known as Owens Pottery, was an American art pottery and tile company that flourished for a few years around the turn of the 20th century.
Roseville Pottery for Love or Money. By: Virginia Hillway Buxton. 1st edition 1977, 2nd edition 1996.