Rookwood Pottery Company
Rookwood Pottery is an American ceramics company now located in the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 1880, and successful until the Great Depression, production has been intermittent and at a low level since 1967, though there was a change of ownership in 2006, and expansion is planned.
History
Maria Longworth Nichols Storer, daughter of wealthy Joseph Longworth, founded Rookwood Pottery in 1880 as a result of being inspired by what she saw at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, including Japanese and French ceramics. The first Rookwood Pottery was located in a renovated school house on Eastern Avenue which had been purchased by Maria's father at a sheriff's sale in March 1880. Mrs. Storer named it Rookwood, after her father's country estate near the city in Walnut Hills. The first ware came from the kiln on Thanksgiving Day of that year. Through years of experimentation with glazes and kiln temperatures, Rookwood pottery became a popular American art pottery, designed to be at least as decorative as it is useful. For more than a decade, beginning with Rookwood's founding, Clara Chipman Newton worked there as a china decorator, archivist, and general assistant with the title of secretary; she shared with Storer responsibility for overseeing the decoration and glazing.
