On May 11, 1883, local interests, including many of the same who were backers of the Red Wing Stoneware Company, formed another stoneware company with a capital investment of $30,000. The Minnesota Stoneware Company’s original shop measured 60 x 120 feet and was two stories tall. They started with two down-draft kilns, a 40 x 100 foot warehouse, plus attendant structures. It’s capacity was 18,000 gallons of stoneware per week from 44 employees. The shop was repeatedly expanded until it was doubled in length and raised to three stories by 1900 and capacity had reached nearly 2 million gallons annually from nine kilns and a workforce of roughly 100 men.
Beginning in 1895, a limited selection of items began being offered in white-glaze, instead of the traditional salt-glaze and brown. The white-glaze, often called “zinc-glaze” because it relies upon zinc oxide as a flux, had been introduced on utilitarian stoneware by potteries in the East, and its usage reached the Midwest about this time. Initially, it required the ware to be placed in closed containers, or under a larger, upturned piece to keep it out of the wood or coal-fired draft of the kiln to avoid contamination, especially during salt-glazing. This prompted the factories to switch to using oil, rather than wood or coal to fuel the kilns.
The change-over to white-glaze completely replaced salt-glazing around 1900. It proved very popular in the marketplace as it had a bright, clean look. It also allowed the capacity numbers and manufacturer or advertising logos to be applied by rubber stamp. A fire broke out in the early morning of February 15, 1900, destroying the MSCO shop. Within a few months the company was back in operation in a new, 4-story brick building on the same site. This building survives today serving a retail shops on it’s first three floors, and residential units on the top floor.
The Minnesota Stoneware Company merged with the Red Wing Stoneware Co., the Union Stoneware Co. sales cooperative, and what remained on paper as the North Star Stoneware Co. in 1906. The factory then became known as “Factory M” of the Red Wing Union Stoneware Co. In 1936 the company name was changed to The Red Wing Potteries, Inc. as which it continued to be known until closing completely during a labor strike in 1967.
