Popular Lines & Patterns:
Rag Rug, Serpentine

Relevant Posts:
2009.08.12 Bennetts Serpentine Dish
2008.07.13 Bennetts Candleholders

According to Chipman, Caroline and Dud Bennett were the owners of the pottery that produced these pieces in North Hollywood starting in the late 1940s. The first thing to note about this pottery (and something that definitely brought me a lot of confusion early on) is that there are at least a few other potteries that use the general name “Bennett”. I don’t believe those are associated in anyway with The Bennetts. Lehner lists various potteries under that name, though they are mostly from the Ohio or Pennsylvania regions.

One helpful thing is that The Bennetts from California nearly always signed their pieces with the article “THE” in front of it. This should help to distinguish them from other potteries.

Their output at first was sort of derivative of Barbara Willis - many items were rectangular pillow vase style items with smoother glaze combined with a band of rougher texture. An example of this are the two pieces I found above. I believe this maroon to pinkish items are candleholders - Chipman has a photo of a vase in this exact style in his Encyclopedia.

Of course, the Bennetts aren’t the only ones who made items very similar to Willis’s, and they later found their own direction and style. The particular pattern that I see the most is called “Serpentine” and is characterized with “S”-shaped squiggles in gold leaf. These appear on usually square or rectangular pillow vases that are glazed green, yellow or gold. Another pattern called “Rag Rug” is a multicolored pattern of rough lines along the side of square or rectangular vases.

As I said before, the markings on the pieces usually have words like “The Bennetts”, the word “California” and an item number (mine are marked #616). The markings are often written in script, and if you view the photos below, you can see that the two stamps are actually different. In addition, I’ve seen a few pieces that are signed with a full name, as in “Caroline Bennett”, also in script. I believe they stopped producing pottery some time in the 1950s.

More Images

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.