For years before I knew anything about California pottery, I’d see the above sign while driving near the northern end of the 710 Freeway. I always thought it was neat, though it was sad to see the abandoned building defaced with grafitti. Then, later on when we began collecting older dishes, I came across some Melmac pieces that were made by the company. It was neat to see the connection, since we live very close to the factory.

Still later, I realized that they had actually started out life as a California pottery in the 50s. They made a whole assortment of different items, such as garden pottery, planters, casseroles, ashtrays, buffet serving dishes, lazy susans, tv lamps, trinket boxes and figurines. The two items I tend to see quite a bit of are the serving dishes and ashtrays. One particular serving dish, which is shown in Chipman’s book, is striking for having a cradle that has handles that are actually made of pottery as opposed to wood or plastic. I see flowerpots quite a bit as well, like the green / yellow one shown below.

The nice thing about Miramar pottery is that it is usually marked with a very clear and defined stamp. The mark will usually give the item number, and in some cases the copyright date. I don’t have any information about the persons involved with running the pottery. It is also not clear at what point in time they switched over to making only Melmac. But I think that the company may have started with pottery, added the plastics at some point in the 50s or 60s, and then finally switched over to making only Melmac sometime in the late 70s.

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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.