I picked up this crazy triangular dish at an estate sale awhile back - it’s made by Yona Ceramics probably in the 50s some time. It’s a covered dish that is spray painted and decorated in gold leaf. For some reason it reminds me of a UFO.

It was actually only a dollar, because it had a large chip on the triangular knob of the dish. That’s a good thing, because I primarily got it just to put it on the Potteries of California database. Geez, the things I do to spread knowledge… I’ll probably donate it back to the thrift soon because I’m not really into items like this.

Actually, the name of this company was originally Heirlooms of Tomorrow. But you’ll mostly find items marked with the name California Originals, which was a trade name that the company later adopted as their actual name.

I’ve seen a ton of these items at the thrift, but I haven’t picked any up until I got this small flowerpot with a nice drip glaze. California Originals is known for flashy orange and red items like ashtrays and chip and dips. I’m not such a huge fan of the look, but at least this flowerpot won’t take up much space (We’ve been running out of space for a few years now, haha.)

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been tuning in eagerly every Sunday night to watch the AMC Original Series “Mad Men”. Design afficianados and mid century modern buffs know there is a wealth of furniture, furnishings and delicious vintage set design to be had on the show which takes place in the short timespan between 1958-1962.

It could be like any other show set in an earlier time period, except that its main focus of is an advertising agency from that period. Thus, there is an extreme attention to detail in the way the sets and were constructed and the overall atmosphere. I’ve only been watching from the start of Season 2, but already I’ve seen some possible California Pottery candidates as furnishings in the dwellings of the Mad Men characters.

In last week’s episode 6, “Maidenform,” I did see what I’m sure is a green Bauer casserole with a gold trivet holder. It was in a scene at Pete and Trudy Campbell’s Park Avenue apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where they were hosting dinner, I believe with his brother? I could see the casserole quite clearly in the shot. It looked similar to the pink Bauer casserole I recently found.

In any case, you can be sure I’m going to be keeping an eye out for more sightings in future episodes. I might also have to go and pick up Season 1 from Amazon, haha…

Edit 09/16/08: Actually, I changed out the photo above, which was originally an unrelated scene that didn’t show any actual Bauer. However, in the most recent one (episode 8 “A Night to Remember”) there’s a scene at the home of Don Draper where they have what I believe is a different Bauer casserole on the kitchen table. In fact, it looks very close to the pink one that I found the other day. Very cool!

After getting a few of these unknown green pottery pieces, I’ve sort of stopped and decided to let everyone else take a crack at them. You know the ones I mean - usually an avocado or verde green, combined with either blueish, white or yellow drip glaze. Sometimes they’re marked as California, and other times not. Often they have call letters that read “CP” and some other number. Sometimes they say USA.

I see a ton of them on Ebay - basically people who have no idea what they are either. I’d really like to find out one day what the deal is with these pieces. Not that some of them aren’t very nice, but after the first initial excitement at finding older pottery at the thrift I’m going to stop coming home with too many.

This particular piece is a fluted vase in avocado green with a yellow and white spatter pattern on the top. It’s actually pretty nice, and I’ll probably keep it for now. There are no markings on the bottom, but I suspect it’s from California. I wonder why none of these really seem to have a maker’s mark. I’m thinking that perhaps some used to have a foil sticker that was removed. Still, I’ve yet to find one that had a sticker still attached. I’m thinking many of these date from the 60s probably up until the 80s.

More photos are on the Unknowns Page, #A0013.

In the latest Bauer mailing list email, I saw they have these interesting new items available called Garden Orbs. They’re basically solid color pottery spheres that can function as table centerpieces or decorations in your flower garden.

They come in 3 sizes - 8, 12 and 15 inch diameter orbs. There are various colors including green, yellow and blue and orange. Hmm.. they remind me sorta of bowling balls. Or jawbreakers if you were a giant, haha!

I’m assuming there’s some sort of flattened footing(?) on the bottom of these so that they don’t roll off your table! Kind of a cool conversation piece, I suppose, although I’d rather get a flower pot as a gift myself. But nice to see them branching out into different products instead of only repurposing the older designs.

Visit: Bauer Garden Orbs

I picked up this wonderful oversized Owl Mug a few months back from an estate sale. I was drawn to it immediately because it just looked cool. However, looking at the bottom of the mug, I saw it was marked as “Pacific Stoneware” so I immediately though of Pacific Clay Products.

However, the design was nothing like I’ve seen from Pacific previously. In addition, the backstamp was not familiar and it included a copyright date of 1969, which is clearly not Pacific as that company stopped producing pottery 20 years before that date.

The full stamp also includes the incription “B. Welsh”. This was the clue needed - I’ve seen people notate this as “B. Walsh” and “B. Welch”. It actually stands for Bennett Welsh who was a highly influential potter from Oregon who passed away in 1998. So this is definitely not from California.

Interestingly, Lehner’s Encyclopedia of Marks mistakenly lists this under Pacific Clay Products. I’m not 100% sure, but I still believe that there is no relation. The thing is that Welsh actually purchased Pacific Stoneware which was a “production ceramics company making wheel-thrown pottery” according to Wikipedia. I don’t know anything about the previous history of that company, so can’t comment on whether or not there was any connection to Pacific Clay Products.

Welsh actually founded the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s ceramics department and by all accounts was a huge repository of ceramics knowledge. I believe he sold Pacific Stoneware in the 70s in order to get more involved with actual clay rather than day to day production of pieces.

Even though it’s not California Pottery, these mugs are fairly collectible. I was happy to snag this one for a few dollars.

We found this odd-looking wabbit at the flea market awhile back for a dollar. He was that cheap because he had a small hairline crack on the side. Although the weird pinkish-blue glaze looked very much like some of the earlier California potteries such as Artistic or West Coast, because he was unmarked on the bottom we had no idea.

A few days later, while leafing through the Chipman scrapbook I found the exact same shape in a different glaze treatment from Bernard Studios. While I’m not 100% sure it is Bernard, I’m fairly certain because some of their other pieces have this same weird pinkish blue glaze. The actual photo shows the same rabbit with funny ear sticking out, but with a more lifelike brownish coloration on white with a very expressive handpainted face.

I believe this item was meant to be used as a cotton ball holder because of the hole in the back where the tail would be. As for the unmarked bottom - Bernard was known to use paper foil labels like many other potteries, and this is especially true for smaller figurines like this one.

We found these amazing individual covered casseroles made by Pacific the other day. They are in unusually good condition with no damage whatsoever - I think their lids are also frequently lost over the years. The color is actually more light teal than turquoise as it looks in the photo. I believe this is the standard Hostessware line that Pacific produced a large amount of items in.

I was stunned to find this set of two Howard Pierce owls sitting forlornly on the shelf of the thrift store the other day. This is my first time finding Pierce items in the wild - other than at the flea market or antique store.

I was nearly leaving the thrift when I spotted the smaller owl on its side way on the back shelf. I pulled it out and was surprised to see that it was in perfect condition. However, it didn’t have any markings on the bottom. So, I was a bit suspicious since there are a large number of imitations being made nowadays with a similar glaze.

Then I found the larger owl on a separate shelf and it did have the markings on the bottom. It was also in perfect condition - I tend to see quite a few of these animal figurines with chipped noses, necks or ears. Perhaps it was because these owls were a bit more compact that there wasn’t any damage on them (this particular thrift is known for clumsy employees who accidentally break their glass and pottery).

In any case, I was really happy with this find. We have a few other Pierce pieces found at the flea market which I’ll post later on…