The Roseville Pottery Company was an

American art pottery American art pottery (sometimes capitalized) 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, an ...

manufacturer in the 19th and 20th centuries. Along with

Rookwood Pottery 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 ...

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 Though the company originally made simple household pieces, the Arts and Crafts–inspired designs proved popular, and Roseville pieces are now sought after by collectors.

History

The company was founded by J.F. Weaver in

Roseville, Ohio Roseville is a village in Muskingum and Perry counties in the U.S. state of Ohio, along Moxahala Creek. The population was 1,746 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Zanesville micropolitan area. Roseville is served by a branch of the Muskingum ...

, in 1890. It was incorporated in 1892 with George Young, a former Roseville salesman, as secretary and general manager. Under the direction of Young, the Roseville company had great success producing

stoneware Stoneware is a rather broad term for pottery or other ceramics fired at a relatively high temperature. A modern technical definition is a Vitrification#Ceramics, vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non-refracto ...

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 Zanesville is a city in and the county seat of Muskingum County, Ohio, Muskingum County, Ohio, United States. It is located east of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus and had a population of 24,765 as of the United States Census 2020, 2020 census, down ...

, and moved the headquarters there. In 1900 Young hired Ross C. Purdy to create the company's first art pottery line, named Rozane (a contraction of "Roseville" and "Zanesville"). 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 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 wa ...

was the

art director Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film industry, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and ...

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. 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. Among Roseville's most popular designs are Blackberry, Sunflower, and Pinecone. 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 The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is an agency in the U.S. Department of Commerce that serves as the national patent office and trademark registration authority for the United States. The USPTO's headquarters are in Alexa ...

for both Roseville and Roseville Pottery. 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.

Collectors

Since the company closed in the 1950s, Roseville pottery has seen two distinct revivals: one with

baby boomer Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. T ...

s 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.

Patterns and Lines

References

Roseville Pottery for Love or Money. By: Virginia Hillway Buxton. 1st edition 1977, 2nd edition 1996.

External links

Official Roseville Pottery websiteJust Art Pottery Roseville Pattern Guide
Arts and Crafts movement Muskingum County, Ohio Perry County, Ohio American art pottery

History

Collectors

Patterns and Lines

References

Further reading

External links