For having produced quite a large number of pottery items, there isn’t a ton of information on Lane & Co.. The company was definitely located in Van Nuys - although, it’s very interesting because the address given in Lehner’s book is located nearly inside the Van Nuys airport! Perhaps the airport, which actually traces its history back to the 1920s, had not yet expanded when Lane was operating. Or, perhaps the address given was some sort of shipping point instead of the location of the actual factory.

In any case, the company produced from the early 1950s up to the late 1960s (at least). The two types of items I see the most of from Lane are planters and TV lamps. The latter is an area they are quite famous for among collectors of those curiosities. Lehner also notes a possible connection with a company called “Sunkist Creations”, although there isn’t much information about this arm of the company, if it was one. Interesting, because I seem to recall seeing some pottery items marked as Sunkist Creations.

Besides planters and lamps, they also made a host of different items like dinnerware, vases and table/wall decoration. One of the most common dinnerware sets they produced is a “western” themed line with cowboy and cow motifs.

The large ashtray shown below is probably in this western line. I find a lot of their items to be somewhat gaudy. I’ve passed on a number of occasions on items marked as Lane and Co. I did pick up the large purple planter below for a few dollars because of the beautiful drip glaze coloring.

One nice thing about Lane items is that they are frequently marked with the name of the company as well as an item number and a copyright date. I haven’t yet seen an instance where the full name was spelled out (Lane and Company) as opposed to “Lane & Co.” Keep in mind that they also did use paper foil labels for certain items - so some pieces may not be marked if the label has been removed.

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