The Collectors of Illinois Pottery and Stoneware are dedicated to communicating and sharing information on Illinois stoneware, potteries, and potters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Since Illinois statehood in 1818, numerous pottery centers were established. The craft of the traditional family Illinois potter satisfied an important utilitarian, economic, and social need of the family unit and the community, when, often, operating a pottery was a sideline to farming. Small family pottery operations were eventually replaced by those offering a more desirable product, or by those supplying a similar product in greater quantities at lower prices. The strong survived longer, but even these family operations were replaced by larger more specialized and automated operations. In the first quarter of the twentieth century the big factories would even merge to simply exist. For instance, and for survival purposes, seven midwestern potteries united to form the Western Stoneware Company in 1906. The Western Stoneware Company competed fiercely with the Union Stoneware Co. of Red Wing, Minnesota, for the tremendous market in outbound regions. Few potteries could profit, while competing against these two giants. This web site is founded on the precept of bringing together collectors, students, and archival researchers of the American potter, their manufacturing facility, their craft, and their finished product.