Producing a variety of wares from the everyday to the fine and artistic, his company, originally founded in the 1840s as the Edwin Bennett Queensware Manufactory,[2] continued in operation until forced to close during the Great Depression in 1936.

Edwin and his brothers, the children of Martha Webster and Daniel Bennett, a local Derbyshire coal company bookkeeper and Methodist preacher, apprenticed at the Staffordshire Potteries approximately 40 miles (64 km) from where the family lived in the East Midlands.

Soon the brothers relocated to Pittsburgh to produce their wares, after which Edwin moved to Baltimore independently in 1846 and founded his own pottery with his own designs, the business growing to multiple kilns in little time.

[14] In fact, the Bennett brothers produced a ware considered as good or even better than the classic Rockingham actually from England, which it was never technically classified as, especially due to important glazing differences, but they used the style name for marketing.

[2] The first pitched battle of the American Civil War happened right in front of his business on April 19, 1861 and Edwin moved with his wife and children to Philadelphia, where in the next year or two he entered into a partnership with his friend the glassmaker William Gillinder, a notable maker of millefiori paperweights,[16] with Bennett contributing some new pressed glass tableware designs.

[20] Among the later original styles he and his company are known for are the praised Albion slip-painted ware[21] as well as the highly glazed "majolica family" Brubensul,[22] both introduced in the mid-90s and with some rarer specimens bought by foreign governments for their national museums.