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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Louisville Stoneware is located in the Highlands section of Louisville, Kentucky. Founded in 1815, it creates fanciful stoneware that is nationally renown. It specializes in decorating its pottery with Kentucky Derby and Christmas themes, but it has other themes as well: Noah's Ark, Primrose, and Pear being examples. They can also do personalized items. Besides pottery, they have made bird baths and bird feeders.

Clay used by the company comes from western Indiana, and may be up to 250 million years old.

Items from Louisville Stoneware are in the Smithsonian Institution and White House. In addition, Queen Elizabeth II was presented a music box made by Louisville Stoneware, given by the wife of Kentucky's governor Ernie Fletcher, that played My Old Kentucky Home when the Queen visited Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby in 2007.

The New York Times singled out Louisville Stoneware as a business especially affected by the United Parcel Service strike of 1997.

During the U.S. presidential campaign of 2004, John Kerry gave a campaign diatribe on small-business healthcare insurance in May 2004 at Louisville Stoneware.

In March 2007, Louisville Stoneware laid off most of its employees: 38 out of 49. AFter which, they retooled their visitor's center and temporarily opened a store at Oxmoor Center in St. Matthews, Kentucky. In July, it was sold to Two Stone Inc., as the previous owner, Christina Lee Brown, wished to retire. The chief concept officer, Lisa Mullins, decided to increase the number of places that sold their stoneware from just Taste of Kentucky, to three additional locations in Louisville, and one apiece in Bardstown, Kentucky, Owensboro, Kentucky, and Cincinnati, Ohio.