The information available on Wade of California has been very difficult to come by. The confusion has been furthered by the fact that “Wade” is a very popular name in pottery and ceramics and dates from the 1800s in the UK. However, the pieces that are found marked “Calif Wade” are DEFINITELY representation of the typical California Pottery look.

The majority of the items found are typically Ashtrays, Lazy Susan Chip and Dips and Leaf serving dishes. They are usually some combination of avocado green, brown-yellow and blue - they have a very 70s look to them. I feel they look very derivative of the Los Angeles Potteries, Freeman MacFarlane and Treasure Craft items. This is not to say there aren’t some attractive examples.

You’ll notice on the chip and dip above I found there is a huge chip on it - I actually did that myself when I knocked it into another piece of California Pottery. I need to be more careful - these pieces look so sturdy, but they’re easily damaged.

As to the history on Wade of Calif pottery pieces - I haven’t been able to find much substantiated information. As I said before, there is a chance that it is related to the Wade potteries in England. This seems to be backed up by a few documents I found saying that the Wade family had NUMEROUS members of the family who went on to operate potteries. And in fact, I believe there was one who moved to California.

In addition, I found one article here that talked about the connection between Hagen-Renaker and Wade. I’m not going to rewrite the information here, so please read that article for more information. In any case, this is very interesting because Hagen-Renaker is a well known California company that produces pottery (to this day) - so it’s not such a far stretch to assume that there was some collusion in producing various California pottery items that were marked with the Wade name. Keep in mind - all of this is speculation by me and nothing else.

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.