The Color of Passion

Ask Bill Stern if he remembers when he made his first California pottery purchase. The answer comes quickly, as if it were yesterday instead of 21 years ago.

“I had a neighbor who was moving and had a yard sale. I had never seen the stuff before, I didn’t know it was California pottery. I was out of work at the time, so I went back to my apartment and called my friend Barbara, who had furnished her place with garage-sale stuff. She said, ‘Who made it? I never heard of it.’ I told her how much it cost, and she said, ‘Do you like it?’ ‘Very much.’ ‘Well, that’s the answer.”’

Stern took his $15 bargain home--a 16-piece lunch set--and took some books off a sideboard to make room to display it.

Ask him if he remembers, some 3,500 pieces of California pottery later, the colors of those first plates, and the answer comes just as quickly. “Orange, yellow, green and cobalt, and the set had been made in Vernon, Calif., about 1936.”

Stern, 55, is absorbed, impassioned, focused--as long as he’s talking about California pottery or California design in general. He says he has two primary reasons for collecting. “I discovered early on that I love to look at colors. I would get stacks of plates, organize them in same colors, and then mix them up, like a color game. But the real visceral thing is the thrill of the hunt. You never, ever know what you are going to find. If you go out looking for something in particular, you are sick, but if you go out saying ‘I am going to find something,’ you will get satisfaction.”

Stern says he started collecting before he realized it. He began going to flea markets every Sunday, something he does to this day. It took him about five to 10 years, he says, to learn how to spot a “find.” Three years ago, Stern bought at auction an 18-inch-high coffee pot made in 1954 by Metlox Pottery, one of 600 California pottery manufacturers. He paid $7. In 1959, the modern, tapered pot retailed at $9.95. Today, Stern estimates the piece would sell for $250.

He always gravitated toward California design, though, attracted by the colors of the glazes that, he noted, are like the palette of his mother’s paintings from the 1950s, which hang on the walls of his apartment.

Pre-EBay, Stern traveled around the country every year in search of California pottery, and he often found “really good California pottery.” These days, he checks out EBay every day.

“My cousin, a psychotherapist, said what I was experiencing was called ‘intermittent reinforcement,’ based on the premise that if you go out every day and find it, you will be bored, but if every third time you go out and find something, it will be a thrill.” Stern paused before adding, “Now she collects.”

He immediately was drawn to the shapes of California pottery--from traditional to whimsical, sensual and curvy. He loves how some of the artisans expanded on traditional handcrafts, a clay bowl that borrows from the scooped-out wooden bowl, an old method but with a different medium.

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Asked to explain how California design can be distinguished from that of the rest of the country, he grows more serious but no less animated. “People came here for opportunity and therefore had the possibility of expressing themselves in ways they couldn’t in their former context. People who came out here felt they could do whatever they wanted. They were released from constraints.”

In addition, he says, “people created impractical things, too, because there was no cultural self-censure. I have a teapot from 1938-39, which is gorgeous but, if you use it--and you should use it--you should wear metal shoes because there is no place to put your thumb. Boiling water will go on your feet. People returned them to the maker, Vernon Kilns. Now they are beautiful enough to be in museums.” He owns two dozen of those killer teapots.

“Collecting,” Stern reflects, “can change one’s life for the better.” Today, Stern’s 2,500-square-foot apartment near Hancock Park, where he has lived for 12 years, has been all but turned into a museum for California pottery. The works line the hardwood floors, sit on and below tables, in closets and drawers, behind his bed, in kitchen cabinets and in the laundry room. Some of them have spilled into the garage. He even made a 2-foot plant stand from a stack of 50 plates.

Oddly enough, Stern’s knack for displaying the pieces in his living room--large jade-green oil jars made by Bauer Pottery in 1934, a 1932 Pacific Pottery orange bean-pot lamp, a small Bauer pear-shaped lamp circa 1930 just to mention a few--in no way interferes with the livability or comfort of the room. The fireplace is flanked by Bauer jardinieres supported by wrought-iron stands. The effect is at once colorful and peaceful.

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Stern makes his living as a freelance writer, focusing on California design, for publications including The Times. His writing career merged with his passion for collecting passion in his recently released book “California Pottery: From Mission to Modernism” (Chronicle Books), which includes photography by Peter Brenner, photographer for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The book accompanies the exhibition, which Stern curated, of the same title at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Stern also is developing plans for his own museum of California design, which will include everything from “cups to cars,” he says. At this point, it’s just a virtual museum, with the Web site address https:// www.mocad.org . He hopes to have a bricks-and-mortar site in Los Angeles in three years. “It is simply so bogus that California doesn’t have a history. California--1930s to the ‘50s--was the most defined design center in the country. There is no other place in the country that has a regional title like California.”

Stern’s interest in California led him to want to study all areas of design within California’s borders. The topic animates him. “Furniture. Cars. Clothes. Cups. Textiles. Even something probably every American has seen--the orange light that flashes at construction sites--was designed in California. The shape is pure and clean, and everyone recognizes it, and it came from Keck-Craig Inc., in Pasadena. They are still around. I called them up and spoke to Henry Keck.”

One thought leads to the next, and the next thing you know Stern is on the floor tugging at a couple of files of memorabilia, such as pottery brochures from the 1930s. One day, he hopes, all of that material will be properly cared for in the design museum.

Until then, it’s stashed under a desk.