The pottery produced in Red Wing is a tangible, material record of Minnesota’s history. In the late nineteenth century, Red Wing stoneware supported agriculture. In the early twentieth century, Red Wing ceramic art decorated houses and apartments. And after World War II, Red Wing dinnerware fueled the domestic imaginations of postwar families. In this way, the pottery influenced how Minnesotans lived, worked, and created the idea of “home.” It endures in museum archives and private collections in the twenty-first century and remains popular as everyday vintage dinnerware and decor.
Red Wing pottery is literally Minnesota. Indigenous people have used the clay of the Upper Mississippi River to make ceramic vessels since at least the Late Woodland period, 500 BCE–1000 CE. Settlers in the region (many of them English and German immigrants) began using clay soil on their properties to make stoneware in the 1860s. The first commercial pottery workshop, the Red Wing Terra Cotta Works, opened in 1868, moving to St. Paul in 1880.
In 1877, the Red Wing Stoneware Company was formed to mass-produce pottery. The new company made an array of durable stoneware that found numerous uses in agriculture: crocks for storage, laundry, or dyeing; jugs for keeping liquids; jars for preserving food; butter churns; spittoons; water coolers; and feeders for poultry. The successful business inspired competitors. Within fifteen years, two rival enterprises (Minnesota Stoneware and North Star Stoneware) emerged in Red Wing, then joined forces as Union Stoneware in 1894. In 1906, the two remaining firms merged to form the Red Wing Union Stoneware Company and cultivated a national market by shipping their goods on trains around the country.
The potters of Red Wing showed a remarkable ability to change with the times. After World War I, more people than ever lived in cities, decreasing demand for agricultural stoneware. In response, Red Wing potters joined the art pottery movement, making objects that were decorative, functional, and beautiful all at once: colorful vases, ornate jardinières, sculpted planters, brushware umbrella stands, and whimsical sculptures. Neutral-colored glazes coated most early Red Wing stoneware, but as art pottery swept the nation, potters applied vibrant and exuberant glazes to their new designs.
Red Wing Potteries, Inc., the company’s new and final name after 1936, worked with three leading midcentury designers to diversify their offerings: Charles Murphy, Belle Kogan, and Eva Zeisel. Each designer’s unique creations—particularly Zeisel’s flowing and whimsical dinnerware—shaped the company’s product lines and created lasting impressions with consumers.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the company introduced hand-painted lines of dinnerware. In 1947, however, it discontinued agricultural stoneware. For the next two decades, hundreds of employees created dinnerware (plates, cups, salt and pepper shakers, pitchers) and art pottery. Red Wing produced dozens of patterns of dinnerware in several price ranges, helping families serve meals across the country. By the 1960s, Red Wing produced more than a million pieces of dinnerware and art pottery per year.
In the late 1940s, the company became an all-union shop. Most of the workers shaping, throwing, and firing the pieces were men. Women, meanwhile, worked mainly in administration and as painters and designers, hand-painting the final flourishes on pottery before firing. Some even went off book and added their own flair to patterns, like a worm emerging from an apple.
In the decades after World War II, Red Wing Potteries faced numerous headwinds. First, imported ceramics, especially lower-priced Japanese dinnerware, eroded Red Wing's market share. Second, sales of Red Wing pottery in department stores sagged throughout the 1950s and 1960s, creating lean years for the company. Third, management doubled down on popular dinnerware sets, especially the Pepe and Bob White lines, by commencing riskier sales in supermarkets, where customers bought fewer pieces, expected lower prices, and were unfamiliar with Red Wing. Finally, new management tried to shrink the workforce and cut costs.
Red Wing Potteries, Inc. closed permanently in 1967 during a labor strike over wages, health insurance, and benefits. Management had previously lambasted the union, including in a full-page newspaper ad in 1950. While the labor disagreement proved an acute crisis, declining sales, an aging factory, and the loss of market share also likely doomed the company in the long term.
Major museums around the world showcase Red Wing pottery, including the Minnesota Historical Society, the British Museum, the Metroplitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.