In the past, I’ve mentioned that the purpose of this website is to try and document some of the lesser known potteries of California. As such, we’ve sort of put many of the larger companies like Metlox on the backburner. However, I’ve decided to start creating galleries for the larger companies as well. The reason is that we tend to come across ceramics, pottery and dinnerware from the “Big 5″ and others like them very frequently. I realized it would be a shame not to put up photos of these pieces as well.

What we’ll try to do with these companies is to highlight the more uncommon lines and patterns from the company where possible. As is the case with Metlox Potteries, there has already been so much written about the company that it doesn’t make sense to rehash it. If you’re interested in more information from these companies, I’d look for the collector books that deal with the larger companies much more thoroughly than we would ever be able to.

I’m trying to think back, but I believe that the first piece of California pottery that I intentionally bought was the maroon Metlox 200 series handled sauce boat shown above. It’s marked “Metlox Made in U.S.A.” with an ink stamp and it also has an inmold stamp that reads #223. After I got the Gibbs book, I later found out that the latter was the item number. The 200 Series is also known as the original “Poppy Trail” line, which later spawned an entire company division.

The large orange grill plate in the back is also another early purchase. It’s known as a “Series 100″ item and was produced between 1932 and 1935. I got it at a garage sale, because the “California Pottery” stamp on the back intrigued me. Later, I found out it was the original line offering from Prouty’s Metlox Company, probably meant to compete with Bauer’s successful pottery items. Gibbs’ book does not expound very much on this early line, and I believe there are only 1 or 2 photos of in the book.

The small blue bowl is actually a #71 Delphinium Blue Metlox bowl, which was produced as a complement for the “200 Series” line. It originally came with 5 sizes, each a different color (#70-#74 in Orange, Delphinium Blue, Rose, Canary Yellow and Sea Green respectively). The bowl originally through me off because it was marked very crudely on the bottom - in fact it looked like someone took a stick and carved the word “Metlox 71″ into the bottom. I got it anyway, and only later figured out that this was the correct marking on these mixing bowls.

I’ll be posting more Metlox items up on the blog as I take pictures of them.