Roseville
Pottery
was
incorporated on January 4, 1892 with George F.
Young as general manager. Production began in
the old J.B. Owens Pottery in Roseville, Ohio
with home wares such as flower pots and cuspidors.
All of the early wares were unmarked. Due to the
success of the pottery under Mr. Young's direction,
Roseville pottery operated four facilities by
1901, two in Roseville and two in Zanesville.
The Midland Pottery in Roseville was purchased
in 1898, Clark Stoneware (formerly used by Peters
and Reed) and Muskingum Stoneware (formerly used
by Mosaic Tile Co.) were purchased around 1901
when the main office was moved to Zanesville.
By
1900 Young believed that the Roseville Pottery
Company was sufficiently equipped and staffed
to contend with Weller for market share. He hired
Ross Purdy to develop Roseville's first art line.
His creation, a duplication of Lonhuda and Louselsa,
was called Rozane--a word coined from the firm's
title and location. Rozane was a finely modeled
line, ranging from shapes with full rounded bowls
and long slender necks ending in deeply fluted
rims to those of simplest classic proportions.
Fine artists decorated the dark, blended backgrounds
with nature studies, floral sprays, animals, and
portraits of well-known personalities and American
Indians. As subsequent art lines were developed,
the trade name" Rozane" became a generalized
term used to indicate all art lines.
The
pottery industry had always been plagued, and
production hampered by losses incurred in the
firing process. Although usually discarded, the
company marketed some of these pieces, making
public how the unexpected action of the fire had
produced results of such beautiful and artistic
nature, such that the value of the piece would
actually increase. Each piece was inspected after
firing and priced according to its individual
merit. There were many pieces produced by most
companies of this time, with much individuality
due to production and human differences. These
"factory original condition" pieces
carry real value.
By 1910, both Roseville locations were closed,
and in 1917 the Muskingum plant was destroyed
by a fire. The former Clark Stoneware plant on
Linden Avenue was expanded to take up the slack.
The Roseville Pottery Company was closed in November
of 1954.
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