We come across California pottery pieces every so often that were either errors or were made as specialty items. This Bauer Brusche plate was pretty interesting though, because of the strange dark green glaze circle almost an inch across on the top surface. Irregular Brusche Al Fresco in speckled colors seems fairly common, but we’ve never seen a plate with a big glob of contrasting color on it like this.

We thought at first it might be an accidental drip, but it’s a little strange that it would be a single large circle and wouldn’t have any other drip marks on it. It’s also strange that they would have the speckled glazes and the solid color glazes in such close proximity to each other - or maybe that was common practice at the time.

We thought perhaps it was a glaze test done by the factory. However, then that seems unlikely that they allowed a test plate that was so obviously non-usable for the average consumer into the “seconds” bin. The only thing we can think of is a worker took the plate home since it was going to be thrown out. In any case, we might just donate this back to the thrift from whence it came… can’t see too many collectors would be interested in a speckled plate with a big blob of green on it like this!