Western Stoneware closes

Western Stoneware Monmouth, Illinois USA., located on U.S. 67 about a 45-minute drive south of the Quad-Cities.
Production will end this Friday at the plant, where competition from foreign pottery makers has become too much to bear, said co-owner Jim Hutchins of Monmouth, who has owned the plant since 1990 with Steven Schwab of Chicago.
“It’s very sad,” Hutchins said. “We’ve been trying to fight it off, but we’ve just had a steady erosion of business over the past several years, and it’s a result of the imported product. We just can’t compete with it.”