rolling hills of Ohio Valley rich in pottery history

Area once known worldwide for pottery tries to continue traditions

Story By Natalie Walston
Photos By Megan Nadolski

Tom Drabic spends most of his days in a dusty pottery factory across the road from the Muskingum River in Zanesville. That’s the same river that was once the first means of transportation settlers in the mid-1880s used to ship out pottery.

Drabic is plant manager of Ohio Stoneware Pottery, a relatively new pottery factory in an industry that has steadily declined in the area.

But there’s no need to tell that to people such as Drabic who have made making pottery their lives’ work. After all, Drabic grew up in Zanesville, which was once known as “Clay City” and the “Pottery Capital of the World.”

“My dad was a maintenance man for Zanesville Stoneware for 10 years,” he said. “When I graduated school, I went to work where he was working.” Drabic wound up staying with the company, designing pottery pieces, modeling and making the dyes for 34 years until Zanesville Stoneware closed its doors in 2002; the business was founded in 1887.

At the turn of the century in Zanesville there were 40 to 50 major pottery companies in the area, according to Mary Ellen Weingartner of the National Ceramic Museum and Heritage Center in nearby Roseville. It was a booming time with seven rail lines leading into the region, giv-ing the pottery nationwide distribution.

“It was the major industry in the region with companies employing 200 to 500 people each,” Weingartner said.

What led to the boom in the industry was clay. In fact, settlers moving into the region found there was “tons and tons” of clay, according to Weingartner, who said there’s enough clay in the ground to last for several hundred years.

In addition, the area was heavily forested so settlers had enough wood to fire kilns, which are furnaces or ovens for burning, baking or drying pottery.

“Once they discovered that clay lies on either side of a vein of coal, then they began digging the coal to fire the kilns,” she said. Later on, pottery companies discovered the area was rich in natural gas; the first gas-fired kiln was used in 1935.

While World War II waged on in Europe, the pottery business in the United States flourished because no imports were coming into the country. But that all changed when the fighting ended.

Weingartner said that “imports came in post WWII and that affects what’s happening here today.” Countries such as Japan, China, Poland and Mexico still ship their products to the United States.

Other factors contributed to the decline, from the invention of glassware – making some expensive pottery pieces obsolete – to indoor plumbing, which cut the need for large ceramic bowls and pitchers for bathing in the house. Weingartner said most pottery pieces were designed for specific household purposes.

“We now live in a very disposable society,” she said.

Now the Zanesville area only has seven small companies manufacturing pottery – a far cry from what it used to be.

Carving out niche markets
It’s early afternoon at Buckeye Stoneware in Zanesville. Four women are taking turns painting a Bush Gnome – yes, a George W. Bush yard gnome no bigger than a Chihuahua. The caricature is wearing camouflage and a belt with a buckle in the shape of Texas. A woman paints on the eyebrows and hair while another woman paints the outfit green, and so forth. The unfinished gnomes stand on a lazy Susan and get moved around to each woman.

Buckeye Stoneware is a retail shop and factory in Zanesville that has been in business for nine years. Through those years, retail manager Julie Webb has seen the company employ more than 40 people; now it only has 15 employees. Webb said providing niche items, such as the Bush Gnome, bring people in to shop.

The store also offers miniature, collectable versions of Nelson McCoy Pottery – a popular area company, now out of business, that once produced more pieces of pottery than all of its American competitors combined from the 1940s to the 1960s. Martha Stewart has highlighted McCoy pottery on a couple of her TV shows and ran a lengthy article in her magazine; in fact the background of her TV show regularly displays a McCoy mixing bowl or a floral display in a McCoy vase.

“McCoy brings in a lot of people,” Webb said.

Buckeye Stoneware also features buckeye leaf pottery to draw in Ohio State fans. Ohio Stoneware has a license to sell OSU-labeled pottery, offering crocks and dog and cat dishes as well as birdbaths, among other things.

With all of the work the seven remaining pottery companies are doing, Drabic hopes to retire from the industry without looking for another job.

I’d like to see the industry pick back up,” he said.

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