Our Story

Monroe Salt Works produces the finest salt glaze stoneware in the world. It is hard to believe that this stoneware can be so durable while being so beautiful. Our stoneware is lead free, very hard to chip and is safe for the dishwasher, freezer, microwave and oven.

We are located in the rolling hills of mid coast Maine near Penobscot Bay. Where we live very much influences what kind of pottery we make. The shapes are simple and the sizes are ample. We make pottery to be used everyday and admired for a lifetime. While some people may hang a plate on the wall as art, we see the plate on a table, full of food, with friends over for dinner.

The designs come from what we see around us. Crows making a lazy flight, or making a racket in the tall pines. Beautiful wild flowers in a field. Cattails growing along a marsh. Big Moose slurping mouthfuls of grass at the edge of a lake. It’s all here and that is why we are here too. This is the place we have chosen to live and we wish to share it with you.

Monroe Salt Works started in 1971. For the past four decades, our skilled Artisans have created our wonderful shapes and patterns by hand. Monroe Salt Works is recognized throughout North America, Europe and Japan as the worlds preeminent Salt Glaze studio.

Salt glazing is a technique developed in Germany in the 15th Century. The pottery we make at Monroe Salt Works is the same age old practice. We load green (unfired) pottery into a large, walk in, hard brick Kiln. After loading, the fire begins very slowly. Over the next 20 hours, the fire builds and the temperature reaches 2300 F. Now the action really starts as we throw handfuls of salt into the roaring blaze. When the salt hits the white hot fire, it is immediately vaporized, the salt vapor combines with the firing pottery to create our pottery‘s unique and distinct glaze. There are always surface and color variations in the pieces from a salt glaze kiln. Some pieces receive large amounts of salt vapor and others little. The color and texture of each piece vary according to where the piece was in the kiln. It is this variation that makes a body of salt glazed pottery so rich and compelling. There are light pots and dark pot and dimpled pots and smooth pots. You can see the mark of the firing on each piece. No two piece are ever alike.

We only send out pieces that meet our strict parameters of quality. However, within that window of acceptability there is always variation of surface and color. It is this variation that we feel adds richness to our product. We want to celebrate the uniqueness for the salt glaze process and keep the technique alive for another 500 years.

For the Artisans at Monroe Salt Works, this variation in pots is exactly what we are after. In this age of mass production and predictability we like surprises. It would be very dull to open the kiln and see all the pots exactly the same. In our pottery you can see the mark of the firing on each individual piece. Each piece has its own character.