Early Years .

In 1898 the Roseville Pottery Company began a move from Roseville to Zanesville, Ohio and by 1910 all production had been consolidated in Zanesville. After a fire in 1917 all Roseville Pottery was produced at a single facility there.

In order to compete with the Standard(brown) Glaze Art Pottery lines produced by other Ohio companies Ross Purdy was hired in 1900 to create a new line of artware which came to be called Rozane after ROseville and ZANEsville. Rozane Art Pottery was highly successfull but by 1914 tastes had changed and the line was discontinued.

A similar change in tastes struck the Roseville Collector world in the latter part of the 20th Century. During 1960's/70's when pottery collecting was growing in popularity the 'brown glaze' ware was king.

"Yuck who would want that late mass produced floral stuff.". Sometime in the late 1980's collector tastes did change in a big way. The 'brown' glaze Roseville market literally crashed.
I can remember conversations with collector/dealer friends where we really thought the 'standard glaze' market will come back. Boy were we wrong.

The Roseville Pottery Co. also produced a matte green line called Rozane Egypto in 1904. There were two other green lines called Chloron and Matt Green. All of these are quite popular with todays Arts and Crafts collectors.

In 1904 Frederick Rhead was hired as the art director. He was the genus behind the introduction of such lines as Crystalis, Fudgi, Aztec, Della Robbia and more. While some of these had limited commercial success most are rare and highly sought by todays collectors.
Della Robbia is, in my opinion the ultimate of Roseville Pottery production and will hold its own against anything produced by any Art Pottery company of the time. Sadly, Rhead chose to leave Roseville Pottery in 1908.

Middle Period.

The Great Depression of the 1930s had a profound effect on the American Art Pottery companies. Costs had grown tremendously and most could not afford labor intensive wares. In order to remain in business the American Pottery manufacturers began production of what should be called 'Industrial Art Ware'. This was not all bad as a group of very talented designers were 'turned loose' to create and much of the best Roseville Pottery was produced during the 1920's-1930's.

Final Years.

After WWII the times were changing and the Roseville Pottery Company went into production of the well known floral lines such as Zephyr Lily, Snowberry, Freesia etc. the past glory was gone and finally after attempts to produce a line of modernistic dinnerware the company was forced to close.

For more information on Roseville Art Pottery history and patterns check out RosevillePottery.info.