Post Your McCoy Art Pottery!

Please post your McCoy Pottery! All pieces and lines from all companies bearing the McCoy name welcome! Lets see them all!

Note: The early history of McCoy Pottery is fairly complex due to the fact that the McCoy family members owned or were partners in several enterprises using the McCoy name. The Nelson McCoy Pottery Company is the entity that produced many of the pieces that collectors associate with the zenith of McCoy art pottery.

In 1848 W. Nelson McCoy & W.F McCoy started a pottery business in Zanesville, Ohio which produced stoneware crocks and jugs. In 1899 the J.W. McCoy was started in Roseville, Ohio making stoneware crocks and then several lines of art pottery until it merged to form Brush-McCoy with several other small local potteries in 1911. In 1910 the Nelson McCoy Sanitary Stoneware Company was founded in Roseville, Ohio making stoneware churns, jars, and jugs in both utilitarian and decorative wares. They chose their Roseville location for the easy availability of clay which for their operations and for several of their local competitors. This company reorganized to become the Nelson McCoy Pottery Company in 1933 and soon after changed its focus to art pottery and floral designs with the addition of a brand new tunnel kiln and many other upgrades to the latest technology to increase production.

Now able to target more affluent consumers they added many more shapes to their production lines including Jardinieres & Pedestals, Umbrella Stands, Vases and other decor products. The despression greatly impacted the pottery business in the 1930's and they banded together with other local potteries to market and merchandise their wares. The company fourished in the 1940's and reaped substancial profits at the time. New massive circular kilns 50 feet wide allowed for thousands of pieces at a time to be produced. The pottery produce land mines during war time and expanded their cookie jar lines during peacetime. In 1950 a great fire decimated the production facilities for McCoy pottery and the family rebuilt with the latest technology becoming the largest producer of pottery in the U.S. and distributed vast amounts of their wares. At its zenith the company employed up to 450 employees.

In 1967 the company was sold to Mount Clemens Pottery Company and then was sold again in 1974 to Lancaster Colony Corporation. The company finally ceased production and closed in 1990. In the last few decades it had faced increasing competition from overseas producers in the end wasn't able to compete with an ever increasing wave of cheap imported wares.

To many McCoy Pottery collectors the 1940's and 1950's are the most popular time periods to collect. Unfortunately there are numerous fakes and reproductions out there for collectors to avoid. In recent decades large quantities of fakes and reproductions have been imported from overseas by wholesalers. To make things worse, these fakes can be difficult to spot due to the utilitarianess of McCoy's wares. Many cookie jars have been faked in large quantities and some jars bearing McCoy's mark are fakes originally produced by Hull Pottery. As with other art pottery the market for McCoy is very weak and prices are currently down considerably.

Please post photos of your collection and have any comments or info you may have regarding the subject matter.

 

Some of my McCoy pottery collection (including some Brush-McCoy pieces since the history gets pretty tangled). Have some more pieces I need to get photos of as well but I will start with this.

 

Additional Pieces

 

Additional Pieces

 

McCoy Pottery Crocks

 

Now you're going to make me take pictures. Not that I have that many.....

 

I don't collect much of anything (outside of dust and cat hair) but I've sold quite a few pieces of McCoy over the years. These are the best. I hadn't a clue the bluebird vase was McCoy, folks here gave me the ID. Love that Hyacinth vase, Joe!

Linda

 

I now have a handful of pieces of the corn ware line designed by John Cusick, but it started with this lidded jar inherited from my grandmother. To my eye, the painting on this piece is superior, in some cases far superior, to that on most of the other pieces, which I take to be of later manufacture. My guess, since neither my mother nor her younger brother could remember a time when it was not on their mother's kitchen counter, is that it was a wedding gift, from the mid-1920s. Appropriately, they lived in Iowa.

 

My pictures are not well-organized, but I was able to find my 1912 Corn pattern creamer.

 

I have a creamer, the next most well executed piece, as well as a mug, a tub that says BUTTER that probably needs a lid, & a piece meant to hang on the wall with a lid that you can slip a hand under to take out a pinch of SALT. Funny thing is, my grandmother used the lidded jar for that purpose, but it, of course, would have required 2 hands (if you wanted to keep the lid). I don't check regularly, so maybe more are out there, but have only once seen the sugar bowl; sold for good money.

 

My turtles hole up in the base of a cookie jar styled as a log. The lid has mushrooms on top. It was sold as Brush-McCoy, but don't know whether it is or not. The mushrooms are glossy & glazed; the base is more of a matte brown. Woodside just fits & Eddie fits on top of her.

 

I actually bought these mugs for resale, but I thought I would add them to this thread as an example of early McCoy Pottery. They are not marked but are shown on page 53 in The Collectors Encyclopedia of McCoy Potter by Sharon & Bob Huxford.

According to Huxford's book these mugs are "vintage c.1926 Nelson McCoy Willow Ware green glaze pottery mugs done in the Morning Glory pattern. These mugs were made by the Nelson McCoy Sanitary Stoneware Co. using the same molds as Brush McCoy used c.1916."

 

Another new addition to the hoard! Also shown in the finds thread.

 

All of your beautiful McCoy pieces are making me smile from ear to ear
Mikey

 

Thanks! Awesome McCoy smiley planter!

 

Thank you.

 

I apologize folks. I kind of dropped the ball on this one. I am grieving the loss of a close family member and as a result am also tied up in all kinds of estate stuff. On top of that I'm getting used to a new phone and photo editor. Regardless, I will try and post periodically. Anyway, below are photos of some of McCoy's flower forms. The two considered the hardest to find are the pink and yellow poppies. The little bird figurines were club pieces and also considered hard to find.

 

LOVE the poppies.

 

Wow that is a fantastic grouping of McCoy! Thanks for posting. Sorry for your loss.

How rare is the big white vase on the left top of your 1st photo? Saw one today at an antique mall and they wanted $170 for it.

 

Visited a different antique mall and found these priced fairly reasonably. My thoughts are that you can never have too many Brush-McCoy frogs.