Rookwood Pottery Company
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Rookwood Pottery
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View from Holy Cross Monastery
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| Coordinates | 39°6′26″N 84°30′3″W / 39.10722°N 84.50083°WCoordinates: 39°6′26″N 84°30′3″W / 39.10722°N 84.50083°W |
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| Built | 1892 |
| Architect | H. Neill Wilson (and later expanded) |
| NRHP Reference # | 72001023 |
| Added to NRHP | December 05, 1972 |
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.
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. The artist Laura Anne Fry worked at Rookwood as a painter and teacher from 1881 to 1888.
The second Rookwood Pottery building, on top of Mount Adams, was built in 1891-1892 by H. Neill Wilson, who was son of prominent Cincinnati architect James Keys Wilson.
Each era of Rookwood work has its own unique character. The earliest work is relief-worked on colored clay, in red, pinks, greys and sage or olive greens. Some were gilt, or had stamped patterns, and some were carved. Often these were painted or otherwise decorated by the purchaser of the "greenware" (unfinished piece), a precursor to today's do-it-yourself movement. However, such personally decorated pieces are not usually considered Rookwood for purposes of sale or valuation.
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