Throughout the rural districts around Zanesville, Ohio, it was common practice after crops were laid by the farmers of the mid-19th century to turn to working the clay they found in abundance in their fields. One of those early craftsmen was Samuel A. Weller. His ingenuity, potter skills, and salesmanship afforded him to establish his own pottery company near Zanesville, in 1872.

With success, followed by the acquisition of improved facilities, he began to experiment with glazes, intent upon developing a more finished product. He soon added ornamental flower baskets, umbrella stands, and jardinieres to his line. In 1884, Laura A. Fry introduced a revolutionary process involving the use of an airbrush to apply background glazes while she was employed by Rookwoood Pottery of Cincinnati, Ohio. She later joined the Lonhuda Pottery of Steubenville, Ohio, and was soon working with Sam Weller. The Fry process was used at Weller in the continued production of Lonhuda. Other talented artists had passed through Weller Pottery, in particular, Charles Babcock Upjohn, Jacques Sicard and his assistant Henri Gellie, to mention a few.

By the end of the first decade, very little "art pottery" was being marketed. "Commercial artwares" were being mass produced---originality and creativity yielded to volume business.The Great Depression of 1929, and then the advent of cheap foreign imports flooding the American market following World War II, caused the domestic pottery market to spiral downward, and early in 1948 the Weller Pottery Company closed.

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