In 1880, Maria Longworth Nichols Storer (1849 - 1932) founded Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio. A wealthy young woman, she was inspired, as so many of her contemporaries were, by the Japanese ceramics displayed at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial International Exposition.
Though she had just one year of formal training in pottery and was unexperienced in business, she opened the first art pottery in the United States, naming it Rookwood after her childhood home.
