Roseville Pottery Marks: Stamps, Labels and Dates

Roseville changed its marking practice roughly every decade, which makes the mark itself the best dating tool on the piece.

• RPCo, Roseville Pottery Company, or Rozane, the last often with a line name attached, were used from 1900 until the late teens or early 1920s.
• A script Rv in ink under the glaze appears on lines introduced from the mid to late teens and continues into the mid 1920s.
• Small black triangular paper labels begin around 1926 and 1927, on lines such as Futura and Imperial II.
• Silver or gold foil labels come in around 1930 and run for several years, on lines including Blackberry, Tourmaline and early Pine Cone.
• An impressed, indented script mark was built into the moulds of new lines from 1932 to 1937.
• The familiar raised script mark was added to the moulds of all new lines from about 1937 to 1953, and always includes U.S.A.

Because the last of these is moulded in rather than applied afterwards, it is the mark most people recognise, and it is also the reason so many collectors assume every genuine Roseville piece carries raised script. Plenty do not.

Some early artware, and some middle period pieces that carried a removable paper label, are unmarked today. The label fell off, and nothing was moulded in behind it.

That single fact explains most Roseville disputes. A vase in a documented shape and glaze, with no mark at all, is entirely consistent with a piece made between about 1926 and 1936, when labels were the factory's chosen method. Absence of a mark in that window is evidence of nothing.

What you check instead:

• The shape number, often moulded into the base with the height in inches, in a form the factory used consistently.
• The glaze, which on Roseville is thick, matte or semi-matte on most 1930s lines, and pools in the modelling.
• The modelling itself, which is crisp on original moulds and softens with each generation of copies taken from a finished piece.
• The foot, which on genuine pieces shows dry, slightly gritty unglazed clay of an even colour.

For the general principle that missing labels explain missing marks across mid-century American pottery, see pottery marks identification.

Roseville Pottery was founded by J. F. Weaver at Roseville, Ohio in 1890 and incorporated in 1892 under George Young. It bought Midland Pottery in 1895 and moved its headquarters to Zanesville, Ohio in 1898 after acquiring the Clark Stoneware Company.

In 1900 Young hired Ross C. Purdy to create the company's first art pottery line, named Rozane, designed to compete with Rookwood, Owens and Weller. By 1901 the company was running four plants with 325 employees.

Two art directors shaped what collectors now chase. Frederick Hurten Rhead held the post from 1904 to 1909 and oversaw Della Robbia among other lines. Frank Ferrell became art director in 1917 and created designs including Pine Cone, which became one of the most commercially successful American art pottery lines of its era.

The company produced its final designs in 1953, and the facilities were bought by the Mosaic Tile Company in 1954. That end date matters when reading marks: nothing genuine carries a mark introduced after 1953.

Roseville has been reproduced heavily, and the raised script mark is the part most often copied, because it is the part buyers look for.

The weaknesses to check are physical rather than documentary.

• Detail: a copy is usually moulded from a finished piece, so every edge is one generation softer. Compare the crispness of leaf veins, petal edges and basket weave against a documented example.
• Size: a mould taken from a fired piece shrinks again in firing, so reproductions often run slightly smaller than the catalogued height.
• Weight and ring: copies are frequently lighter, with a duller sound when tapped.
• Glaze: original 1930s matte glazes are dry and soft-surfaced; many copies are glossier, thinner, and too evenly coloured in the recesses where original glaze pooled.
• Mark placement: on genuine moulded marks the script sits in the same plane as the base and shares its glaze and wear. A mark that looks applied, or that is sharper than the wear around it, is a warning.

When a purchase turns on the attribution, an auction house specialist or an established art pottery dealer is the right check.

Roseville bases carry more than the mark, so photograph the whole base rather than cropping to the script.

Use low, raking light so a moulded or impressed mark throws a shadow and the shape number becomes readable. Include the foot rim, the unglazed clay and any label remains or glue shadow, which is itself evidence of a label period. Take a second photograph of the whole piece and a third of the modelling on the side, which is where reproductions give themselves away.

Photograph it and the app identifies it, and the mark type in your own photograph is what you match against the periods above.