Catalina Collectors Blog

Do you have a rare piece of Catalina that you would like to share (image wise) with the Catalina collecting community? Perhaps an installation in your home or a display? A lot of the fun with Catalina are the unusual and one-off pieces made by workers in off hours that come to light every year, sometimes very early red clay pieces, or tiles with a twist. Here are images of one of the more unusual pieces of Catalina we’ve seen in 20 plus years. It is a very large (12″ tall) Catalina Toby pitcher, and it was most likely a wedding gift given to a young Mexican American couple who lived and worked on the Island.  The husband played in the smaller mariachi style band that Mrs. Wrigley’s sponsored and was also a laborer at the tile plant.  The image that appears in our book on page 157 shows Mr. Isidro Tarango (see below.) He is second from the left in a demonstration of “tuneful Pottery” at the Bird Park.

The Tarango family history is fascinating and goes way back on the Island. As serendipity would have it one of Isidro’s daughter-in-laws is practically our neighbor. The images above are courtesy of Sid and Sandy Tarango, but you can see the piece for yourself this September 2009 at the Catalina Island Museum Exhibit in their new case.

Sorry for the long delay between postings but we’ve been very busy putting the finishing touches on a book to document the Catalinaware exhibit we guest curated at the SFO Airport Museums last year, as well as some other fun projects you’ll hear about soon. The new book will be in print before the end of the year. For those of you who saw the exhibit, we have also included additional material, many new surprises and never-before-seen finds, as well as more information on the Catalina artists and ceramists. A striking new development occurred last year when, in collaboration with our brilliant colleague Susan Toomey Frost,  we finally discovered the connection between San Jose Workshops (made in San Antonio, Texas during the WPA era) and Catalina Island Pottery & Tile. We didn’t want to jump the gun on Susan’s excellent new book “Colors on Clay“, which will reveal the new information in much more detail, but since the previews are out we felt it was no longer necessary to keep it under our hat. No wonder we love both! The glazes were created (or passed along?) by the same individual, Frank Henderson, who left the Catalina Island Pottery & Tile Factory in 1930 to go to Texas with these very same special glaze formulations. It is also another Catalina connection to Malibu’s Rufus Keeler, since Mr. Henderson also worked at Calco Tile prior to joining Catalina. The trail continues with Mr. Henderson’s visit to Mexico to establish Lamosa’s early tile output, and his later stay at Camark Pottery. We look forward to sharing images showing the various similarities between the makers. Yes, we are history nerds, and Mr. Henderson is seemingly the Forrest Gump of the tile world.