There are a couple of things that are interesting about the Elzac company, which produced various cute ceramic items similar to Rio Hondo and Copa de Oro in the 1940s. The first is that according to Chipman’s Encylcopedia and various sources on the internet, Zachary Zemby, one of the founders of Elzac went on to form the Mattel company. Elzac was formed by Elliott Handler and Zachary Zemby. Mattel was formed by Matt Matson and Elliott Handler. One company faded away before the 50s while the other became the powerhouse of the toy world that brought us Barbie - funny how those things happen.

The second interesting thing about Elzac is that while their specialty was ceramic figurines, pins, costume jewelry and giftware, they incorporated Lucite into their designs. While this isn’t a guarantee that a piece is Elzac, it’s often a good bet that if the ears or other appendages of a figurine are made of plastic, it might be an Elzac production. They also occasionally used other material in their figures, like feathers and paper.

Since I don’t collect these pieces at all, I’m going to point people to a really good gallery of Elzac and other related items. I believe that much of the time, Elzac items either sported paper / foil labels or they were unmarked.

There is quite a bit of crossover regarding the collectibility of these items - the jewelry crowd seems to have a good interest in the company’s items because they made quite a few pins and brooches. Their desirability is somewhat increased by the rather short time that the company was in operation. It appears that they folded after only six years of production. I don’t have an exact address for the location of the company, but they are said to have operated out of Los Angeles. If there are any Elzac collectors out there who could contribute a photo or two of their favorite pieces, I’d appreciate it since we do not collect them but I’d like for them to be represented here.

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.