Ohio Valley Stoneware - Impressed Stamp Pottery Mark

by Lisa
(lmlois pa)

Ohio Valley Stoneware - Impressed Stamp Pottery Mark:- Im trying to find info on this

marked ohio valley stoneware 004
can anyone help me please....

Thank you

lisa

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Ohio Valley Stoneware - Impressed Stamp Pottery Mark

The forum Help Elf says:-

The Carnegie Public Library, in Ohio has a published list of pottery industries in the East Liverpool area of Ohio. It lists a firm called "Ohio Valley Stoneware" as trading for only on year 1975-1976. I looked further and found a newspaper article on September 17th, 1975 reporting one of the worst fires in Ohio history where the "Ohio Valley Stoneware" Pottery was burned down.

So I would keep your wares safe as they are very rare and the local Ohio Valley Pottery museum might be interested in talking to you.

The Ohio Valley is rich in pottery history with Homer Laughlin, Nelson McCoy Pottery, Taylor Smith and Taylor and many other famous alumni. It is an area rich in all the natural resources needed for ceramics - clay, coal, forest and natural gas.

Late 19th-century potters in the area made saltglazed stoneware decorated at Wellsburg, Wheeling and other centers. The stoneware was made in places ranging from steam-powered factories to kick wheels in clearings. The potters shipped out their wares on the Muskingum River.

Later, after the end of the second world war, the potteries began to fall into decline because firstly, modernisation in appliances meant the demand for ceramic items was no more and secondly, markets opened up from cheap foreign imports, particularly from The Far East. European porcelain was seen as the high end product of preference.

The Ohio pottery community must have been quite tight at that time and getting smaller by the year with big firms closing and people losing jobs, going on their own for a while and then closing again. Many firms are listed in the library list as having only been around for a year or two - such is the shuffling and re-dealing that goes on within a declining industry. However, your firm was destroyed by fire.

You can research this firm more at the the National Ceramic Museum and Heritage Center - www.themuseumofceramics.org/links.html - or contact collectors organisations. There is at least one Ohio Valley China Collectors organisation I know of - it is called the Ohio Valley China Collectors Convention (formerly known as the East Liverpool Pottery Collectors Convention)

It's not all bad news in that area though. In a town called Zanesville the river flows and passes a factory covered with dust - a good sign because this means its still active and plying its wares successfully.

This factory is the Ohio Stoneware Pottery (not the "Ohio Valley Stoneware" you are looking for). Like happens in many pottery districts around the the world it seems to be the relative newcomers who seem to rule the roost. Portmeirion in Staffordshire - only begun in the tough times of the second half of the 20th century when most of the age old Stoke firms were in serious decline, now own Royal Worcester and Spode (two of the oldest and most important ceramics businesses the world has every known).

The Ohio Stoneware Pottery is owned by Mary Ellen Weingartner and is a newish pottery factory in an area that, like its counterpart in the UK, has been in steady decline over the years.

The factory offers a variety of decorative stoneware pottery and I think has some kind of association with Homer Laughlin Fiestaware - but I am sure exactly what arrangement that is. Maybe someone can expand on this.

For general free advice on how to research your collection, Peter wrote this page:

value of antiques.

H.E.