Early on Red Wing Union Stoneware Company was producing a line of ceramic wares, most of which would now be classed as art ware. Indeed, pieces listed in the catalog, previously mentioned, all have individual page headings titled "Artware Division". Red Wing Union Stoneware Company, at the time, considered a wide range of products to fall under the label of "artware." Current collectors might have difficulty envisioning various sand jars and umbrella stands, urns, large vases, and the many different types of garden wares including flower pots and porch pots with saucers and bird baths as art pottery. But since the company labeled it artware at the time it seemed appropriate to mention it as such in this article.

Information on the early artware made at the
potteries in Red Wing is scant. During the 1880s an individual or group
could commission an individualized stoneware presentation vase. In the
1890s Red Wing Stoneware companies produced lawn vases, cuspidors, and
umbrella stands. These early items were produced in plain terra cotta
and (according to the catalog of the Red Wing Stoneware Companies and
John H. Rich Sewer Pipe Works, 1894) "specifically designed with a view
to decorate them as taste may indicate."

After parting ways with George Rumrill in December, 1937, Red Wing continued to make pottery for another thirty years. In 1938 the company commissioned New York-based industrial designer Belle Kogan to design 100 new vase shapes for production. These were aggressively marketed in the trade magazines as "the Belle Kogan 100." Kogan also designed some Red Wing lines in the 1950s and 1960s.

The term "industrial artware" was coined by Paul Evans (in his definitive Art Pottery of the United States) to encompass pottery that did not meet his standards for admission to the hallowed halls of Art Pottery. Strictly speaking, Art Pottery is an art movement, a subset of Arts & Crafts, an aesthetic philosophy influential roughly between 1870 and 1920. "Real" Art Pottery was made primarily to serve an aesthetic or decorative purpose, and was only secondarily utilitarian, if at all.