I’ve seen a couple of these Judy of California pieces but didn’t pick one up until recently because the sellers wanted just too much for them. The first piece we got is a large oblong shaped planter that has a little bit of a freeform touch to it. It has a really nice glaze, a brown and white drip glaze. Along the side of the planter are three grooves that give it a neat look. It’s footed, with each of the 4 feet being unglazed.

Backstamp is impressed into the mold and reads “JP17 Judy of Calif”. I haven’t been able to find too much information on this pottery - Chipman’s books don’t even mention it or even list it in the index. The Scrapbook does have it in the very back under “Postscript of California” where he lists all the pottery names that have “of California” attached to them. Other than that, there isn’t much info on it.

Since this first piece we’ve picked up a few others as well. From watching auctions, I can deduce that Judy of California made pottery planters and cookie jars and various other items. This is pretty much the extent of what we’ve seen. Colors of the planters are usually brown and yellow or green and blue drip glaze. To me, some of these glazes look very similar to Hull pieces.

The backstamps are mostly similar in the wording, saying “Judy of Calif”, except sometimes they are uppercase letters and sometimes they are script letters. There’s a great variability in the way the stamps are put together as well. ID numbers are sometimes given and usually are of the form like mine, 1-3 letters and then a number. As far as we know, all of their items were marked in some way - which is nice. Unclear whether or not they also had paper labels.

I don’t have any idea on the dates of this pottery, but some of the cookie jars were marked 1977. If I had to guess, I would say Judy of Calif made pottery from 1960s-1980s or so. Likewise, no idea who Judy was - we just know that like many other smaller potteries, it was probably a good biz decision at the time to include “of California” on your stamps.

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