Collecting Antique American Art Pottery

Collectors of American art pottery typically start out without any goal or objective. It often begins innocently enough by inheriting a piece of Roseville or Rookwood pottery. Others are simply looking for the right decorative arts and crafts Grueby, Van Briggle or Teco vase to accent their mission style furniture.

Regardless of how it starts, collectors of art pottery usually decide upon a particular goal. Common art pottery collector goals may include collecting an entire line of Roseville, focusing on examples of a particular Rookwood artist; or pursuing pre 1912 Van Briggle Pottery. For example, we know collectors focusing exclusively on completing particular Roseville patterns such as blue Pinecone, Sunflower, or Baneda as well as others looking only for Charles Todd Rookwood pieces and still others seeking only Van Briggle examples dated prior to Artus Van Briggle death in 1904.

Roseville wall pockets are a common collecting theme for many Roseville pottery collectors. There are numerous collectors out there attempting to obtain examples of every Roseville pottery wall pocket produced or what they consider to be the top 50 Roseville wall pockets. Other twists on Roseville collecting themes include collecting only 3” Roseville jardinières in each color and pattern to focusing exclusively on Roseville flower frogs or one piece from each pottery line produced by Roseville.

Obviously there is no right or wrong way to collect Roseville, Rookwood, Van Briggle or any other antique art pottery. There are as many ways to collect pottery, as there are examples of pottery produced.

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