Stoneware is a hard, nonporous kind of pottery. Stoneware containers are used in restaurants to store food and in factories to store chemicals. Stoneware also makes durable dishes and pipes. In addition, potters use the material to create statues and other art objects. Stoneware is made by baking a mixture of special clays at extremely high temperatures. Heat causes stoneware to become nonporous, and so the material does not need to be glazed.
Stoneware was first produced in China during the A.D. 400’s. Production was based in the Rhine River region of Germany until about 1671, when the potter John Dwight began manufacturing stoneware in England (see Dwight, John). Stoneware was popular among artistic potters in France during the 1800’s and was called gres. Early settlers in America made stoneware brine containers, milk pitchers, pickle crocks, and a number of other useful items. The manufacture of stoneware eventually was centered in western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, where the pottery is still made today.
