Rookwood pottery usually exceeds the quality of other late 19th and early 20th-century ceramics in the United States and Europe, and is highly collectable. The pottery was made in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Mount Adams and is easy to identify due to excellent markings.

Maria Longworth Nichols Storer founded Rookwood pottery in the late 1870s as a way to market her hobby - the painting of blank china. Through years of experimentation with glazes and kiln temperatures, she eventually built her own kiln, hired a number of excellent chemists and artists who were able to create high-quality glazes of colors never before seen on mass-produced pottery.

Each era of Rookwood work has its own unique character:

The earliest work is relief-worked on naturally-colored clay, in pinks, greys and sage or olive greens. Some were gilt, or had stamped patterns, and some were carved. Often these were painted or otherwise decorated by the purchaser of the "greenware" (unfinished piece), a precursor to today's do-it-yourself movement. However, such personally-decorated pieces are not usually considered Rookwood for purposes of sale or valuation.

After this period, Storer sought a "standard" look for Rookwood, and developed a number of very common treatments: the "standard glaze," a deep gold, red and orange over dark brown fired in such a way as to effect a very high-gloss finish, often in leaf or flower motifs. A series of portraits - often of generic American Indian characters or certain historical figures – was also produced using these particular glazes. Next was the "matte glaze," a flat but textured glaze developed by Artus Van Briggle, often painted on soft colored clay, which used "sea green" for aquatic and floral motifs. This pale blue-green glaze was usually applied over a soft yellow, bluish or red base. Another common Rookwood style of this period was the "vellum" glaze, usually a matte light blue, put on top of a very lightly-colored clay. This was most often used for landscape scenes.

Other popular styles that came out through the lifetime of the Rookwood factory included the "iris" glaze, a high-gloss white over pinks, blues, and yellows and usually used for floral motifs, and the less-common but very collectible "tiger eye" which left gold streaks from ingredients in the glaze. This last glaze was unstable and it is not clear whether it was abandoned for reasons of chemistry or popularity.

One of the last styles of Rookwood was the "ombroso" glaze, not used until after 1910. Ombroso, used on cut or incised pottery, is a brown or black matte glaze.

The company was hit hard by The Great Depression. Architects couldn’t afford Rookwood tiles and mantels. Mass production potters churned out cheap look-alikes. By 1934 the company showed its first loss, and by 1936 was operating an average of just one week a month. On April 17, 1941, it filed for bankruptcy.

Though the company closed its doors, its products never lost their value. Even today, Rookwood pottery is highly sought by private collectors and museums. In 2004, 124 years after its founding, a piece of Rookwood pottery sold for $375,000 at auction, setting another world record for pottery.

On July 10, 2006, the Rookwood Pottery Company re-established a presence in Cincinnati. There is a new production facility in the Corryville neighborhood of Cincinnati. The company has since produced a commemorative plaque in honor of the rededication of Fountain Square (October, 2006) and a beer stein in cooperation with Christian Morelein brewery to commemorate the annual Bock Fest (February, 2007).