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Salt-glazed stoneware is a type of stoneware produced by adding salt to a kiln to create a glass-like coating on the pottery. At approximately 1660 °F / 780 °C, the salt (sodium chloride) vaporizes and bonds with the clay body. The sodium in the salt bonds with the silica in the clay to create a silicate glass. (For more on techniques and science, see Salt glaze pottery.) A common technique employed on salt-glazed stoneware is the use of cobalt decoration, where a dark gray solution of clay, water and the expensive mineral cobalt oxide is painted onto the unfired vessels. In the firing process, the cobalt reacts to produce a vibrant blue decoration that has become the trademark of these wares.

Although salt-glazed stoneware probably originated in the Rhineland area of Germany circa 1400s, it became the dominant houseware of the United States of America circa 1780-1890.

Americans began producing salt-glazed wares circa 1720 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Yorktown, Virginia. By the 1770s, the art of salt-glazed stoneware production had spread to many centers throughout the United States, most notably Manhattan, New York. There the Crolius and Remmey families (two of the most important families in the history of American pottery production) would, by the turn of the nineteenth century, set the standard for expertly crafted and aesthetically pleasing American stoneware. By 1820, stoneware was being produced in virtually every American urban center, with potters from Baltimore, Maryland, in particular raising the craft to its pinnacle.

In the last half of the nineteenth century, potters in New England and New York state began producing stoneware with elaborate figural designs such as deer, dogs, birds, houses, people, historical scenes and other fanciful motifs including elephants and "bathing beauties."

Stoneware was used for anything one might use glass jars or tupperware for today. It held everything from water, soda, and beer to meat, grain, jelly, and pickled vegetables.

With the proliferation of mass production techniques and machinery throughout the century, in particular the breakthrough of John Landis Mason's glass jar (see Mason jar), what had been one of America's most vital handcrafts gradually ground to a halt. By the turn of the twentieth century, some companies mass-produced stoneware with a white, non-salt glaze (commonly referred to as "bristol slip"), but these later wares lacked, for instance, the elaborate decorations common to the earlier, salt-glazed stoneware.

Antique American salt-glazed stoneware is now highly collectible.

American stoneware manufacturers of note (organized by geographic location) include:

Manhattan (New York City) -- John Remmey, Clarkson Crolius. Bennington, Vermont -- Julius Norton. Utica, New York -- Whites & Co. South Amboy, New Jersey -- Captain James Morgan, Warne & Letts. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania -- Cowden & Wilcox. Waynesboro, Pennsylvania -- John Bell. Greensboro, Pennyslvania -- Hamilton & Jones. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -- Richard C. Remmey. Baltimore, Maryland -- Henry Remmey, David Parr, Maulden Perine. Alexandria, Virginia -- B.C. Milburn. Richmond, Virginia -- John P. Schermerhorn, David Parr, Jr. Strasburg, Virginia -- Samuel Bell, Solomon Bell, J. Eberly & Co.

Original research and publication on many of these people has been done by members of the Zipp family of Crocker Farm.

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See also: Salt glaze pottery

• The Adam Weitsman Collection of American Stoneware in the New York State Museum.

• Bennington Museum -- Bennington pottery collection.

• Alexandria, Virginia, Archaeology Museum -- Stoneware excavated from this prolific potting community.

• Ornate Manhattan Stoneware Teapot -- From the New York Historical Society

• Museum of the Shenandoah Valley -- Holds numerous examples of Shenandoah Valley of Virginia stoneware.