| When I was about eleven or twelve, my
grandparents bought this house in Carlsbad. In town, there's a shop called "El Corral
Pottery". For those of you who don't speak Spanish, that means "The Corral
Pottery". Ah, to be bi-lingual! Anyway, the shop sells stuff like concrete fountains
out front, and concrete deer and garden gnomes and little bunnys to forget about and break
your mower blade on. Inside, it's dark and cool, and filled with shelves that are covered
in pottery. Bauer and Fiestaware plates, bonsai pots, mildly amusing cookie jars of fat
clowns and elephants. That kind of thing. But when I was a kid, there were old
Hagen-Renakers. The first time I came in there was a bunch of Monrovia horses, mostly
duplicates of just a few molds, and badly detailed. There were about two dozen mini head
down colts in matte bay, for instance. And several brown Roughnecks. Anyway, over the
summers I spent in Carlsbad, I would save up and buy a few horses each time. One day I
discovered that there were boxes of broken horses in the back. (This is the sad part.) The
man wanted fifty cents for minis and a dollar for DWs, but we weren't too well off so my
Mom would only buy me ones I could find the legs for. (She has since apologized, many
times. Who knew?) One day I came in and the boxes had been tossed out.
Many years later, when talking to Jim Renaker, he mentioned a man called "The Captain" and told us the story about how El Corral started... There was a man who made his living out of other peoples problems. No, he wasn't a lawyer. He was a salvager. If your truck lost a load of wood all over the road, he would come in and buy the lumber cheap from your insurance company, and then resell it to someone who wanted distressed 2 x 4s. If your train car overturned, spilling oranges over the fields, he knew a man who made orange juice. He roamed the California coastline, sniffing out disasters, poking his nose into bankrupt businesses, following fire trucks like a Dalmatian. He was a proud and eccentric man and his wife spent a lot of time alone, we can suspect. She took up ceramics to fill in her time, and one day The Captain began to look at her hobby in a new light. He started making the rounds of the many pottery shops up and down the coastline. This was the 1940's and 50's, when the California pottery scene was at its peak and converted houses were filled with little factories. There were many women doing pottery, because their husbands were off to war, and women could make pottery just fine. They were called "mudhens", a derisive term then, because they weren't professional. He would pull up in his old dingy truck, and offer to buy their damaged wares. His price was by the boxful, and the potteries were glad to see him come. Mud was cheap, and labor was cheaper, and pottery seconds were almost junk. Hagen-Renaker was on his list, along with uncountable little factories with their offerings for the postwar brides on shoestring budgets. The Captain came to them all, and took with him whatever they would sell, and he began to accumulate a LOT of pottery. So he made a room in his house, lined with shelves, and he began to put the pottery up for display. But you couldn't just come in and buy one piece, oh no, he had bigger dreams. The price of the room was two thousand dollars, a set price, but eventually the room would be full enough of pottery that someone would hand him two grand and haul it all away, to start their own "pottery shop". Then, he would buy a box of cigars and a jug of whiskey, and go off by himself. (See what I mean about his wife?) When the whiskey was gone, the last cigar was smoked, and the headache wore off, he would come back and start his rounds again. Over and over he filled that room, and every time someone with hope in their hearts and two grand in their pockets would empty it to start their new business. El Corral Pottery was one of these. Eventually, the California pottery craze died out with the advent of Tupperware and melamine. (My mom had the ugliest set of plates, they were avocado green with gold flecks, in a really grotesque pattern, and they were "Miramar Melamine". I used to chant that name, it had such a mesmerizing sound... they were indestructible plastic and we all hated them. Maybe that's why I have Fiestaware now.) Housewives no longer filled their little California bungalows with cheery ringholders and wall plaques, and slowly the Asian market began to undersell the already sadly depleted potteries. Only a handful survived. When I pass El Corral Pottery, I sometimes think about The Captain. He still lives on in little eccentric shops and his big laughter can be heard at night, wherever there is someone who puts their faith in mud, and in the skill of their hands to shape it. We are dormant now, the "mudhens" that those old potters laughed at, but we keep the traditions alive and we can still live the dreams. Joanie at Pour Horse |
