Marshall Pottery Inc. is the largest manufacturer of red

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay pa ...

pots in the United States. From 1974 to 2015, Marshall Pottery operated a 100,000 ft² (9,000 m²) retail store adjacent to its headquarters in

Marshall, Texas Marshall is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. It is the county seat of Harrison County and a cultural and educational center of the Ark-La-Tex region. At the 2020 U.S. census, the population of Marshall was 23,392; The population of the Greate ...

, which at one time attracted over 500,000 tourists each year. Marshall Pottery was founded by W. F. Rocker in Marshall in 1895. Rocker located the business in

East Texas East Texas is a broadly defined cultural, geographic, and ecological region in the eastern part of the U.S. state of Texas that comprises most of 41 counties. It is primarily divided into Northeast and Southeast Texas. Most of the region co ...

because of its abundant

water Water (chemical formula ) is an inorganic, transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance, which is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known living organisms (in which it acts as ...

and white clay deposits. In 1905 Marshall Pottery was acquired by Sam Ellis. With the invention of the glass canning jar and other new competing products in the 1920s, the business almost folded.

Prohibition Prohibition is the act or practice of forbidding something by law; more particularly the term refers to the banning of the manufacture, storage (whether in barrels or in bottles), transportation, sale, possession, and consumption of alcoholi ...

led to a thriving moonshine industry and a need for inexpensive jugs to store the liquor. If not for the sale of jugs during Prohibition, Marshall Pottery would likely have gone bankrupt. In the 1940s, with the discovery of a clay that required a lower firing temperature, the pottery began producing flower pots. For many years the company continued to employ potters as its primary means of manufacturing. One of these employees, Pete Payne, became a master potter and displayed his technique at the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Found ...

. Since the construction of a new facility in 1998 most of the pottery's production has been automated. However, hand made pottery can still be purchased, and tourists can watch potters create it. In October 2015 Marshall Pottery Old World Store closed its doors. Along with its closing went the hand-turned pottery division, leaving only the terra cotta production facility operational. In April 2017, a Marshall Pottery worker, Arturo Gonzalez, was locked inside a kiln, which was then heated, killing him. In November 2017, OSHA fined the company over $545,000 related to Gonzalez's death. A worker died in a similar incident at Marshall in 2008.

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Manufacturing companies established in 1895 Marshall, Texas Manufacturing companies based in Texas Ceramics manufacturers of the United States 1895 establishments in Texas