The Red Wing Wing: Unregistered for a Century, Then the Reason for a Lawsuit

By Matthew Partsch · Owl and Twig Vintage · October 20, 2026

A blue wing has marked Red Wing stoneware since about 1910. For more than a century, no company put it on the federal trademark register. In 2014, one finally did — and two years later sued a volunteer-run pottery museum over it.

Five companies become one, and a wing appears

German immigrant John Paul made stoneware on a farm near Red Wing, Minnesota, from 1861 to 1863 — the first commercial pottery in the area, by the local historical society's own account. Red Wing Stoneware Co. incorporated on February 9, 1877, with $25,000 in stock, after businessman C.C. Webster gathered local backers. Minnesota Stoneware Co. followed in 1883. North Star Stoneware Co. incorporated in 1892 and was absorbed by the other two in 1896. In 1894 the rival makers formed a joint sales arm, Union Stoneware Co., to sell their combined output under one roof.

In March 1906, Red Wing Stoneware, Minnesota Stoneware, the Union Stoneware sales cooperative, and North Star Stoneware (by then existing only on paper) merged into the Red Wing Union Stoneware Company. The old Red Wing Stoneware and Minnesota Stoneware factories became "Factory R" and "Factory M" inside the new combined firm.

The wing itself came after the merger, not before it. The Red Wing Collectors Society's own published history dates the mark's introduction to "around 1909," but the earliest documented reference it can point to is later still: a May 25, 1910 article in the Red Wing Daily Republican mentioning "the new red wing trademark." Even the organization that has spent decades cataloging this company's history gives its own signature mark a year of uncertainty.

Production of large stoneware ware ended around 1917 as hand-turning gave way to machines. Art pottery followed in the 1910s; dinnerware arrived in 1935. In 1936 the company dropped "Stoneware" from its name and became Red Wing Potteries, Inc. A strike over pay, health insurance, and a pension plan in June 1967 ended the run: on August 24, 1967, stockholders voted to close the factory for good.

No company registered the wing for a century

A search of federal trademark records for the companies that actually built the wing's reputation turns up nothing. Searching Justia's trademark database for "Red Wing Potteries" and separately for "Red Wing Union Stoneware" returns hundreds of broader "Red Wing" matches — shoe company filings, aviation marks, unrelated product names — but none owned by either company name. Red Wing Stoneware Co. (1877–1906), Red Wing Union Stoneware Co. (1906–1936), and Red Wing Potteries, Inc. (1936–1967) appear to have sold stoneware under the wing for sixty years without ever putting the mark itself on the federal register.

The first Red Wing-branded pottery trademark on record at all is a comparatively recent one: RED WING POTTERY, a word mark filed February 21, 1997 by Red Wing Pottery Sales, Inc. — the retail successor formed after the 1967 closure — with a sworn first-use date of July 11, 1996. It registered January 23, 2001 and has since been renewed. That filing covers the word mark only, not the wing design, and it came from a company selling a new 1996 stoneware line, not from any of the three that made the pieces collectors actually prize.

A 2014 filing, then a lawsuit against the museum

The wing design itself wasn't federally registered until 2014. On May 19 of that year, Wells Valley Enterprises, Inc. filed three marks at once: a pure image mark of the wing (Serial 86285214); a circular word-and-design mark reading "RED WING STONEWARE CO." across the top and "RED WING, MINN." across the bottom, with a wing at the center (Serial 86285266, now Reg. No. 4,939,017); and a plain oval text version of the same wording with no wing graphic (Serial 86285267, now Reg. No. 4,939,018). All three claim the same first-use-in-commerce date: December 1987 — not 1877, not 1910, but a date that lines up with the Falconer-era revival company that had bought the Red Wing Stoneware name and technical records in 1984 and resumed production three years later. On the circular design mark, the applicant disclaimed "STONEWARE CO" and "MINN." as merely descriptive and relied on Section 2(f) — acquired distinctiveness through long use — specifically for the words "RED WING," an implicit concession that the place name alone wasn't automatically protectable on its own.

The applications were published for opposition on December 29, 2015. Sometime in the roughly year-long dispute that both sides later described, Wells Valley Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Red Wing Stoneware and Pottery, sued the Red Wing Collectors Society Foundation — the nonprofit, formally established in 2000, that runs the free, volunteer-staffed Pottery Museum of Red Wing — for trademark infringement. The suit alleged that the Foundation's use of the "Red Wing" name, a "winged logo," and similar graphics infringed Wells Valley's claimed marks and caused market confusion. The Foundation denied wrongdoing and argued that "Red Wing," the wing symbol, and similar markings had long been used by multiple Red Wing-area makers to identify local pottery, that no single company owned them, and that Wells Valley's own predecessors had allowed the same kind of use by others for years.

The settlement, announced February 22, 2016, left the Foundation able to keep operating exactly as before, required no payment to Wells Valley, and let the Foundation maintain — without a court ruling either way — that it had never infringed anything. Two months later, on April 19, 2016, the two "RED WING STONEWARE CO." marks issued as registered.

The company didn't last long after that. Bruce and Irene Johnson, who had bought the Red Wing Stoneware Company in 2013, closed its manufacturing and retail operation in the fall of 2019, citing other business opportunities and Bruce Johnson's recurring health problems from clay dust exposure. Yet the trademark paperwork kept moving: a Section 8 use affidavit was filed on one of the 2016 registrations in November 2021, and on March 23, 2023 — nearly four years after production stopped — Wells Valley Enterprises filed a third "RED WING STONEWARE CO. RED WING, MINN." application, this one for a narrower slate of goods: clay ornaments and "pottery stone."

Mark	Owner	Filed	Sworn first use	Status
RED WING POTTERY (word only)	Red Wing Pottery Sales, Inc.	Feb 21, 1997	July 11, 1996	Registered and renewed, 2001
Wing design only (Ser. 86285214)	Wells Valley Enterprises, Inc.	May 19, 2014	December 1987	Registration detail not on record
RED WING STONEWARE CO. (circular, with wing)	Wells Valley Enterprises, Inc.	May 19, 2014	December 1987	Registered Apr 19, 2016 (Reg. 4,939,017)
RED WING STONEWARE CO. (oval, text only)	Wells Valley Enterprises, Inc.	May 19, 2014	December 1987	Registered Apr 19, 2016 (Reg. 4,939,018)
RED WING STONEWARE CO. (clay ornaments, pottery stone)	Wells Valley Enterprises	Mar 23, 2023	Not shown on record	Registration detail not on record

How to tell a real one

• Read the stamped company name, not just the wing. "Red Wing Stoneware Co." marks the earliest pieces, pre-1906; "Red Wing Union Stoneware Co." runs 1906 to 1936; "Red Wing Potteries, Inc." covers 1936 to 1967. An ink-stamped wing with no company wording at all, by itself, generally signals newer production — either the 1996-forward Red Wing Pottery Sales line or the 1984-2019 Red Wing Stoneware Company.
• Check the glaze surface under raking light. Genuine old salt glaze has a faint, bumpy "orange peel" texture from the firing process. A perfectly smooth, glassy shell is a sign of a modern glaze formula, not period salt-glazing.
• Look at cobalt decoration up close. On an authentic piece, the blue sits under the glaze with soft, feathered edges. Cobalt that sits on top of the glaze, flakes at the edges, or pools inside scratches and old chips was very likely added later.
• Handle the handles. Hand-applied handles from the 1877–1936 period carry faint finger impressions and slight asymmetry between the two sides. Perfectly symmetrical, uniformly molded handles point to later, more mechanized production.
• Turn it over. A base with soft, rounded wear, embedded grit, and a little honest iron staining has been sitting somewhere for decades. A machine-smooth or evenly sanded base has not.

The look-alikes

Two separate, still-overlapping companies have legitimately sold wing-marked Red Wing pottery since the 1980s, and collectors regularly mix them up. Red Wing Pottery Sales, Inc. is the direct retail descendant of the original factory, formed in 1970 after R.A. Gillmer bought the liquidated assets; it introduced its own new salt-glazed stoneware line in 1996 and still operates from Red Wing. Red Wing Stoneware Company is a separate firm entirely — founded in 1984 by potter John Falconer, who bought the rights to the Red Wing name and the original technical records, sold to Bruce and Irene Johnson in 2013, and shut its manufacturing down in 2019. Both companies' wares can carry "Red Wing" wording and a wing mark; neither is the 1877–1967 firm whose output anchors most of the collector market.

Within the antique material itself, pieces stamped "Minnesota Stoneware Co." predate the 1906 merger and are sometimes miscatalogued as Red Wing because they're so often sold and displayed alongside it — the two companies shared a region, a merger, and eventually a factory floor, but a Minnesota Stoneware mark is its own maker, not an early Red Wing stamp under a different name.

What they sell for

A 30-gallon salt-glazed crock with a blue butterfly decoration, dated to roughly 1877–1900 and stamped twice with the Red Wing Stoneware name, sold at Bramer Auction & Realty in Amherst, Nebraska for $32,000 after opening at $1,000 — its owner, 91-year-old Lois Jurgens, had originally planned to price it at about $20 for a garage sale before deciding it was too heavy to move. At the other end of the market, Crocker Farm's July 2024 stoneware auction sold a four-gallon crock stamped "MINNESOTA STONEWARE CO / RED WING," with cobalt leaf decoration but a 9-inch crack and rim chips, for $210 all in.

Between those extremes, early-period crocks and jugs with strong advertising graphics or unusual decoration have reportedly brought $20,000 to $80,000 at various sales over roughly the past decade, while common, undecorated pieces can sell for as little as $40. Contemporary wing-marked pieces made by Red Wing Stoneware Company under its 2014 trademark registration — the ones using what the company called original techniques — sell for substantially less than either antique tier above, reflecting a production run measured in decades rather than the century-plus history behind the original wing.

Where the records disagree

News coverage of the 2019 closure muddles two different companies into one history. A 2019 wire story describing Bruce and Irene Johnson's decision to shutter Red Wing Stoneware Company says the business "has operated since 1877" — but the Johnsons' company was Falconer's 1984 revival, not the original 19th-century firm. The two share a name and a claimed lineage; they are not the same corporate entity, and the 1877 date belongs to a company that closed 17 years before Falconer bought its name back.

The wing mark's own origin year isn't settled even by the organization best positioned to know it. The Red Wing Collectors Society's published company history says the wing emblem was "introduced around 1909," then cites a May 25, 1910 newspaper article as the earliest documentation it actually has — leaving a year of daylight between the claimed introduction and the earliest paper trail for it.

The widest gap sits inside the federal trademark filings themselves. Three separate 2014 applications, all for marks built around the word "Red Wing" and its wing symbol, swear the same first-use date: December 1987. That's not 1877, and it's not 1909 or 1910 either — it's a date that fits the Falconer-era revival company's own early production far better than it fits the mark's actual, much longer documented history. Nothing in the public filings explains why an applicant registering a 137-year-old symbol would swear to using it only since 1987; the simplest reading is that December 1987 was the earliest use the registrant could confidently document for its own, much younger company, not for the wing mark as collectors understand it.

For more companies whose trademark filings arrived long after the name did, see the guides to Anchor Hocking's Depression glass patterns and the Esso/Enco/Humble road-map trademark fight. For the rest of the library, see the Field Guides index.