At every antiques auction I’ve been to, when a piece of Roseville pottery is for sale there’s plenty of interest and it always does well. It’s no big surprise I guess, since Roseville consistently shows up on lists of top collectibles.

The Roseville Pottery Company was founded in 1890 in the town of Roseville, Ohio and began by producing run of the mill pottery products. In 1898 the company moved its offices to Zanesville, Ohio, a location favored by some of the country’s top pottery makers due to the rich clay available there. It wasn’t until the introduction of the hand-crafted Rozane line in 1900 that the company entered the high quality art pottery market, producing pottery that was hand painted and often signed by the artists. Instead of the plain and predictable shapes and colors typically used for vases and other pottery, the Roseville Pottery Company chose to create pieces with original forms and unique colors for the time. In 1904 the company hired Frederick Rhead as art director, and under his guidance the company produced some of the designs most desired by collectors today, including Della Robbia, Aztec, Fudgi and Crystalis. As the demand for costly art pottery decreased, the company shifted to commercially produced lines without hand decoration and ceased producing art pottery in 1914. In 1919 Frank Ferrell took the job of art director and oversaw the creation of popular Roseville designs like Wisteria, Sunflower, Pinecone and Dahlrose. Roseville struggled after World War II as the demand for high quality pottery decreased and in 1954 the company shut down.

In addition to the vases they’re best known for, Roseville also made products like cookie jars, candle holders, wall pockets, bowls, umbrella holders and flower pots. Because Roseville pottery is highly sought, it has been reproduced quite a bit and buyers should beware. This web page is dedicated to teaching collectors how to spot reproductions of Roseville pottery: http://www.wwcomponents.net/roseville/roseville.html#experimentals .

And here are photos of authentic Roseville maker’s marks as well as fakes: http://www.wwcomponents.net/roseville/rosevilleMarks.html

This site has photos of a wide range of Roseville styles and products: http://www.rosevilleplace.com/roseville-pottery/roseville02.php

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 26th, 2006 at 5:14 am and is filed under collecting fyi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.