"We’re an average family that had a wild idea.“

We’ve always taken great pride in working with small manufacturers and individual makers—true craftspeople whose devotion to their trade is evident in the quality of their work. For this series, we’re spotlighting some of our longtime (and more recent) makers. The family-owned Ohio Stoneware makes some of our favorite kitchen cookware, including our bestselling Stoneware Mixing Bowls.

Blessed with abundant natural resources, Zanesville, Ohio, was once considered the pottery capital of the world. In the 19th century, surging interest in hand-crafted ceramics (aided in large part by displays at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876) created a huge market for art pottery. Zanesville was at the center of it all, with as many as 400 different lines that are still collected today. Post–World War II, the pottery trade and Zanesville itself fell victim to post-industrial decline—a common story in all too many American cities—but the tradition lives on in the work and the spirit of Ohio Stoneware.

“My family started a retail pottery business in 1957, so I grew up on the retail side of the industry,” explains Tiffany Pattison, who startedOhio Stoneware with her husband, Ross. Her parents bought and sold pottery and would visit all the local potters; Tiffany would regularly run orders with her mom, and she knew all the local businesses even as a kid. That still didn’t quite prepare her forwhat came next.

“In 2005, several of the local manufacturers announced that they were going to close, kind of overnight—within 30 days,” she explains. ”Three of the seven [pottery manufacturers] that were left weren’t going to exist anymore. So our family kind of had a pow-wow about what that meant for my mom’s business, and in conversation, Ross and my stepdad said, ‘Well, maybe we should try to buy one of these facilities and see if we can manufacture pottery’ [laughs]. I chuckle about it because we’re just ... we’re an average family that had a wild idea, and here we are, almost 20 years later with a thriving business.”

Of the manufacturers that were closing their doors, two had previously been taken over by large corporations. More often than not, that means the bottom line becomes more important than heritage and history. And that makes it easier for those big companies to simply walk away when times get tough. But the Pattisons knew Zanesville’s history was special, and worth preserving.

“Historically, Zanesville was known for art pottery,” Pattison says, citing major names like Roseville, Weller, and McCoy—familiar names to readers who know their pottery (or who enjoy the occasional episode of Antiques Roadshow) . “We have an abundance of natural gas, so firing the kilns, sourcing that natural gas was easy, and we had a great workforce in the area. Robinson Ransbottom Pottery really kind of brought more of a utilitarian feature to the area, and that’s the company we bought out.”

“We find that when the economy is in a downturn, there’s a higher demand for pickling crocks because folks are planting gardens and trying to come up with more economic ways to fill their pantries and cupboards,” Pattison says. ”During COVID, when people were home a lot more, we saw a huge increase in demand because people were trying to figure out what to do with all those vegetables they grew in their gardens!”

Pattison says mixing bowls and bread loaf bakers also sold exceptionally well during the pandemic, as so many of us started baking our own bread at home. She says sales of those products have remained strong evenas the world has shifted back toward something resembling normal.

While Zanesville’s pottery history owes much to the area’s clay deposits, the Pattisons don’t actually use their local material, finding it a bit too sandy to produce the texture they like.They source their clay from nearby Tennessee to get just the right texture they need, and they’re proud to only use materials from American sources. They’re making the exact product they want to make, and they’re doing it ethically and locally.

“We are still a family-owned business,” Tiffany says. ”Ross and I are the owners. My stepdad was our warehouse manager for several years until he retired, and Ross’s mom worked in our office for several years. We’re very family-oriented in how we run our business.”

“When we opened in 2005, we had two employees. Ross and I both worked jobs full-time outside of the business. We did that for several years just to get that business to survive, basically. Today we have about 35 employees.”

It’s a genuine American success story, and one we’re honored to have a small role in.

"We’re an average family that had a wild idea.“

We’ve always taken great pride in working with small manufacturers and individual makers—true craftspeople whose devotion to their trade is evident in the quality of their work. For this series, we’re spotlighting some of our longtime (and more recent) makers. The family-owned Ohio Stoneware makes some of our favorite kitchen cookware, including our bestselling Stoneware Mixing Bowls.

Blessed with abundant natural resources, Zanesville, Ohio, was once considered the pottery capital of the world. In the 19th century, surging interest in hand-crafted ceramics (aided in large part by displays at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876) created a huge market for art pottery. Zanesville was at the center of it all, with as many as 400 different lines that are still collected today. Post–World War II, the pottery trade and Zanesville itself fell victim to post-industrial decline—a common story in all too many American cities—but the tradition lives on in the work and the spirit of Ohio Stoneware.

“My family started a retail pottery business in 1957, so I grew up on the retail side of the industry,” explains Tiffany Pattison, who startedOhio Stoneware with her husband, Ross. Her parents bought and sold pottery and would visit all the local potters; Tiffany would regularly run orders with her mom, and she knew all the local businesses even as a kid. That still didn’t quite prepare her forwhat came next.

“In 2005, several of the local manufacturers announced that they were going to close, kind of overnight—within 30 days,” she explains. ”Three of the seven [pottery manufacturers] that were left weren’t going to exist anymore. So our family kind of had a pow-wow about what that meant for my mom’s business, and in conversation, Ross and my stepdad said, ‘Well, maybe we should try to buy one of these facilities and see if we can manufacture pottery’ [laughs]. I chuckle about it because we’re just ... we’re an average family that had a wild idea, and here we are, almost 20 years later with a thriving business.”

Of the manufacturers that were closing their doors, two had previously been taken over by large corporations. More often than not, that means the bottom line becomes more important than heritage and history. And that makes it easier for those big companies to simply walk away when times get tough. But the Pattisons knew Zanesville’s history was special, and worth preserving.

“Historically, Zanesville was known for art pottery,” Pattison says, citing major names like Roseville, Weller, and McCoy—familiar names to readers who know their pottery (or who enjoy the occasional episode of Antiques Roadshow) . “We have an abundance of natural gas, so firing the kilns, sourcing that natural gas was easy, and we had a great workforce in the area. Robinson Ransbottom Pottery really kind of brought more of a utilitarian feature to the area, and that’s the company we bought out.”

“We find that when the economy is in a downturn, there’s a higher demand for pickling crocks because folks are planting gardens and trying to come up with more economic ways to fill their pantries and cupboards,” Pattison says. ”During COVID, when people were home a lot more, we saw a huge increase in demand because people were trying to figure out what to do with all those vegetables they grew in their gardens!”

Pattison says mixing bowls and bread loaf bakers also sold exceptionally well during the pandemic, as so many of us started baking our own bread at home. She says sales of those products have remained strong evenas the world has shifted back toward something resembling normal.

While Zanesville’s pottery history owes much to the area’s clay deposits, the Pattisons don’t actually use their local material, finding it a bit too sandy to produce the texture they like.They source their clay from nearby Tennessee to get just the right texture they need, and they’re proud to only use materials from American sources. They’re making the exact product they want to make, and they’re doing it ethically and locally.

“We are still a family-owned business,” Tiffany says. ”Ross and I are the owners. My stepdad was our warehouse manager for several years until he retired, and Ross’s mom worked in our office for several years. We’re very family-oriented in how we run our business.”

“When we opened in 2005, we had two employees. Ross and I both worked jobs full-time outside of the business. We did that for several years just to get that business to survive, basically. Today we have about 35 employees.”

It’s a genuine American success story, and one we’re honored to have a small role in.