The Pain of Loss Blossoms Into Beautiful New Career

As is Jewish custom, Lissi Kaplan marked the first anniversary of her mother’s death, her Yahrtzeit, with a ceremony.

Traditionally, that somber occasion is marked by the lighting of a special candle, among other rituals. And Kaplan did light a candle May 3, 1998, a year after her mother died. But Kaplan did something utterly original as well. She had a tea party.

Attended by Kaplan’s friends and her older sister, Sindi, the party was a festive, as well as heartfelt, way to remember their late mother. It also was the occasion for unveiling a one-of-a-kind tribute to Elaine Kaplan, who died of cancer in 1997 at the age of 67.

That tribute was Mimi’s Garden, a flower-strewn china pattern that Kaplan created in her mother’s honor and lovingly hand-painted on porcelain.

As the Calabasas resident explains, her three children always called their grandmother “Mimi,” which is why the pattern is not Elaine’s Garden. Besides paying homage to a beloved mother and grandmother, the tea party and Mimi’s Garden also “launched my career, really,” Kaplan recalls.

Today, Kaplan is one of a handful of Californians practicing the traditional art of painting on porcelain.

According to Kaplan, most of what looks like hand-painted porcelain is created by applying decals to fine china (that is true of many antiques as well as modern pieces, she says). But Kaplan does her artful work the old-fashioned way, painstakingly brushing a layer of color onto a white porcelain base, then firing the piece before the next color is applied.

“You can’t put color on color” without firing the object at each stage, she explains. And, much like the watercolorist, the porcelain painter introduces white into her design by allowing the underlying medium to show through.

“They say it’s one of the hardest art forms because you’re working on a slippery surface,” says Kaplan.

Indeed, she not only paints on porcelain, she also writes on it, using a special pen full of liquid gold or another color to sign her work and otherwise identify it.

Kaplan, who grew up in Fresno, trained at USC to sing opera. As so often happens, that led her not to the Met or La Scala, but to gigs singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

She subsequently became an interior designer, who often made original furniture for her clients and one-of-a-kind accessories to match, including Victorian-style lampshades for which she dyed the beads just the right color.

Then, several years ago, Kaplan’s younger sister, Beth, developed breast cancer, and Kaplan found herself spending hours sitting in hospital rooms, working on her lampshades as if her life depended on it.

“When my sister had cancer and then my mother got cancer, I needed something to hold me together,” she recalls. “Now I know why God gives us gifts. We get through things with these gifts.”

Kaplan’s sister recovered, but her mother did not, and among her mother’s belongings, Kaplan found the inspiration for her new career.

“As I was cleaning out her house, I saw her pieces of porcelain everywhere. I felt like I had found my art form.”

Since then, Kaplan has received the kind of recognition that most artists and artisans wait decades for.

Through a friend, her work was brought to the attention of Gov. Gray Davis’ wife, Sharon. She called Kaplan and said she had been searching for someone to create gifts for dignitaries featuring the state flower, the California poppy.

As a result, those the governor wants to recognize will now receive porcelain trays featuring yellow poppies hand-painted by Kaplan and identified on the back, in her enviable handwriting and in pure gold, “Commissioned by Gov. Gray Davis and First Lady Sharon Davis.”

Needless to say, Kaplan dubbed the pattern, which is for the exclusive use of the governor’s office, Sharon’s Garden. Among the first recipients will be Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and best-selling guru Deepak Chopra.

Kaplan does commercial commissions as well. Tea time is a big deal at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, just as it is at the grand old hotel of the same name in Hong Kong. Kaplan designed a tea set for the Westside facility that features crocuses of a type that bloom only in her imagination, a pattern with a whimsical, Asian feel.

“I did it in three colors so they could mix and match,” Kaplan says of the Peninsula tableware, which includes wonderful little napkin rings that also function, with the addition of a flower, as tiny vases.

Kaplan accepts commissions from relatives who want to give a child an instant heirloom for a special birthday, bat mitzvah or other milestone. And she has designed teacups for some of the best-known women of our time.

This year, at a fund-raiser for Al Gore’s millennial bid for the presidency, one-of-a-kind teacups that Kaplan designed and painted were presented to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Tipper Gore.

Tipper’s Garden features roses in three pastel shades on a field that suggests clouds, an effect that Kaplan describes as “dreamy.”

“You know how she was talking about depression,” Kaplan says of Tipper Gore, who has spoken publicly of her own bout with depression and has been an advocate for equitable health-care coverage for mood disorders. “I wanted to give her a sky.”

Hillary’s Garden features roses in a bold shade of purplish red, called American Beauty.

“This color has a lot of gold in it. It’s very strong,” says Kaplan, who thinks the color reflects the first lady’s personality. “I picked my strongest pink for her, and I picked my softest pink for Tipper.”

Both women thanked Kaplan personally for their teacups.

Clinton told Kaplan she loves tea and said of her personalized cup: “I’m taking it on Air Force One, I’m taking it right to the White House, and I’m using it every day.”

From what Kaplan could see, the first lady could use a good, strong cup of tea.

“She was worn out, let me tell you,” Kaplan recalls.