Rookwood flame mark

How to read it

Maria Longworth Nichols started the Rookwood Pottery in 1880 in an old schoolhouse her father had bought, and named it after her childhood home in Walnut Hills (Miami University's art museum; Barber's Marks of American Potters gives 1879). Under its manager, William Watts Taylor, Rookwood won the gold medal at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1889. Barber wrote in 1904 that no pottery in the United States had been so prolific in marks, with upwards of 130 devices besides record numbers, letters and date symbols, and that the history of every piece was stamped or painted on it. The flame mark is the factory mark among them. Rookwood went bankrupt in 1941, changed hands, and returned to full production only in 2006, when local investors revived it in Cincinnati. Today's Rookwood, which owns the name, makes pottery and tile in the same Cincinnati neighbourhood, Over-the-Rhine.

Also searched as: rookwood flame mark, rookwood marks, rookwood pottery marks, rp flame mark.

Counting the flames

Barber sets out the system as the factory used it. The RP monogram was first adopted in 1886. In 1887 a flame point was placed above the monogram, and one point was added each year after, so the mark for 1900 has fourteen. In 1901 the same mark was used with a Roman numeral below for the first year of the new century, and the Stickley Museum's 1927 vase has XXVII under it.

Not every account counts the same way. Miami University's art museum says a flame was added for each year after 1888; Barber, writing while the system was in use, starts the count in 1887 and reaches fourteen in 1900, and the Stickley Museum also has fourteen flames by 1900.

Before the flames

Barber lists the earlier marks. Before 1882 the decorator usually painted or incised the pottery's name and the date, or the initials R. P. C. O. M. L. N. (Rookwood Pottery, Cincinnati, Ohio, Maria Longworth Nichols). From 1880 to 1882 a design by H. F. Farny of a pottery kiln and two rooks was printed in black under the glaze. From 1882 the regular mark was the word Rookwood and the date, impressed, until 1886.

The other letters and numbers on the base

Rookwood also stamped how a piece was made. Barber names six clay letters, G, O, R, S, W and Y, for ginger, olive, red, sage green, white and yellow bodies, and size letters A to E beside the shape number. The Stickley Museum adds that the size letter usually sits to the right of the shape number and the clay letter often below it, that decorators inscribed their initials on hand-painted pieces, and that glaze names such as Iris or Sea Green were incised or stamped by the artist.