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2009.08.31 Brayton Laguna Stand

The successful and pioneering Brayton Laguna Pottery was the main reason that the Laguna Beach area became such a mecca for art and potteries in the 40s-50s. I’ve seen various examples from the pottery, and like many pottery manufacturers that lasted for a long period of time, their focus changed over the years.

The earlier items from the 20s and 30s were mostly solid color or 2-3 glaze color household dinnerware, accesories, tiles and garden items. In fact, I’ve heard that his solid color glazes were one of the starting points for the whole craze - later emulated quite successfully by Bauer, GMcB and others.

This later expanded into tourist items like decorated plates and small figurines. From the 30s through the pottery’s demise in 1967 or so, the company focused mainly on both animal and human figurines - they were among the first companies to really popularize it. They received the first contract to produced Disney characters from any pottery. Later items of the 50s-60s followed the trends of the day, with elongated, modern-looking sculpture items and lines being added.

While it was originally founded in 1927 by Durlin Brayton at his home, the pottery eventually expanded into a larger factory with modern kilns.

There are various marks that you can find on the backs of Brayton items. These included incised, in-mold, painted, ink-stamped and occasional paper labels. The latter often occurs in conjunction with other methods of marking. Many items were marked, but there are some that weren’t - especially the figurines. I’ve seen the famous Brayton Laguna giraffes (the one with one neck encircling the other) at the thrift that didn’t have any mark whatsoever on the body or hooves. By the way, the reason I didn’t pick that one up was the ears were broken off of the piece.

Chipman has a great description of the various stamps and the time periods they occurred in. I’ve seen “Laguna Pottery”, “Brayton Laguna Pottery”, “Brayton Pottery”, “Brayton’s” and “Brayton’s Laguna Beach Calif”. The dutch themed pitcher I found below is marked “Brayton’s” along with an item code number. It also seems to have an ink mark representing either the decorator or the finisher.

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Note: We've tried to provide as much info as possible on this pottery maker or artist. For further info, you may want to research the items they have on Ebay listed under this name. We've tried to hand tailor the searches below so they will bring up the most accurate results. If there are no results, it will list general California pottery.