I am thankful for the porn star J. D. Long. Thirty years ago, while I still felt like a displaced New Yorker, J. D. – at the time my neighbor in Beverly Hills Adjacent – was moving to his sugar daddy’s ranch in Texas and he sold me a luncheon set of solid-color dishes – green, orange, cobalt blue, yellow – that had been made by Vernon Kilns in Vernon, California, in the 1930s. I soon learned that that company was just one of many that had made “California pottery.” From California pottery I made the unexpected, though inevitable leap to California design – everything from cups to cars, chairs to guitars, teapots to laptops. Along the way I met their designers, historians and collectors and their friendship made me feel that I belong here.
– Bill Stern is director of the Museum of California Design.
– Lori Zimmerman is a California mixed-media artist.
Top image: Left pitcher, Modern California, Vernon Kilns, Vernon, California, 1937; right pitcher, Early California, Vernon Kilns, Vernon, California, 1935. Photo credit: “California Pottery: From Missions to Modernism” (Chronicle Books, 2001); text: Bill Stern; photographs, Peter Brenner.
Bottom image: “We” by artist Rochelle Rubinstein, woodblock printed and dyed organza, draped and photographed, 2002.