What is McCoy Pottery?

McCoy pottery is American pottery which was produced by the McCoy Pottery Company. The McCoy Pottery Company changed names and owners several times over the course of its existence, making it difficult to pin down examples of authentic McCoy pottery. This difficulty has been complicated by the fact that McCoy pottery is often unmarked, reflecting the fact that it was mass-produced for daily use, not with collectors in mind. The home of McCoy pottery is in Roseville, Ohio, a region which has long been a center of pottery production thanks to its natural clay deposits. In 1848, the earliest incarnation of McCoy pottery was being produced by the McCoy family, although many people date McCoy pottery to 1910, when the Nelson McCoy Sanitary Stoneware Company was founded. Well through the 1960s, McCoy pottery was being produced and widely sold. However, the company went through a series of sales and new owners and an accompanying decline in production until 1990, when production of McCoy pott ... more