One of the great things about California pottery is that you never know where it’ll turn up. Well, I guess it isn’t that surprising considering how popular the items were in the middle of this century. I’m aware that quite a few food companies and manufacturers used Calif pottery in their photo shoots, but I haven’t really seen a ton of different companies besides the more common ones like GMcB Franciscan, Bauer and Metlox.

Today we were at a flea market and picked up an interesting “cookbook” from Arden Farms that dates to the 1950s. (Incidentally, southern Californians might be interested to know that Arden Farms became Gelson’s and Mayfair Markets!). These little cookbooklets were extremely popular and you could often pick them up at supermarkets. We got this one for the kitschy illustrations, but it turned out that they had a picture that featured some Brock of California items. I think this is the first time I’ve seen Calif pottery shown in one of these older booklets - I’m going to have to keep an eye out of them now.

I think this is mostly the Harvest pattern, but I know Country Modern was very similar - I think the latter had yellow borders instead of brown. They seem to show salt and pepper shakers, two different sizes of bowls and a lidded saucepan. I believe we have the shakers somewhere around the house (in Country Modern pattern), but I haven’t taken pics of them yet. It’s really neat to see the items being used in the book, but boy that food in them looks kinda gross. =)