Architectural Pottery and Californian planters

Living in California has made me revisit gardening, landscaping and interior design. The severe drought of the last 5 years has resulted in a lot of people getting rid of their green lawns and replacing their water-guzzling plants by hardy succulents, landscaping with rocks and pebbles and the use of planters. I wrote about the drought and the use of succulents here.

Above and below: outdoor and indoor vintage planters by Architectural Pottery. Image by fashionsphinx.com

When I moved to California at the end of the 80’s  I was introduced to unique pottery-making and exquisite earthenware design  through the Bauer Pottery and Gainey Ceramics brands and later that of Heath Ceramics. Tile has been a favorite building material in California since the early Spanish settled the area in 1.769 and brought with them bright-colored tiles. Spanish, Mexican, and the attending Chinese design of the 17th and 18th centuries have all influenced the decoration of tile and other pottery in California.

Subsequently I was introduced to the world of California planters from the Architectural Pottery company after seeing the beautiful white planters pop up in a couple of stunning LA homes, in my favorite mid-century antiques stores and in books about California design and architecture, in particular in the beautiful photographs of Julius Schulman. The simple matt-white planters are featured in many of his photographs in clusters or isolated, elevated by spindly stands or hugging the ground.

Below: A photograph by Julius Schulman. The Stahl house, designed by Pierre Koenig in 1959.

Above: the Frey house. Photographed by Julius Schulman.

Architectural Pottery was founded in 1950 by Max and Rita Lawrence. Prominent mid-century LA architects such as Richard Neutra and Pierre Koenig favored the pottery line for spare, geometrically ordered residential gardens and commercial buildings. The Museum of Modern Art in New York exhibited pieces as early as 1951.

In the 1950s modernism came to define the way of living in Los Angeles. Captivated by the inviting climate and newness of land, architects and designers created a new sense of living by embracing the capability of an indoor-outdoor lifestyle through post-beam construction and walls made of glass.  Max and Rita Lawrence, however, added their own special warmth to this new lifestyle by bringing the outdoors inside through streamlined pottery. The Lawrence’s saw the opportunity to produce and distribute these new designs and brought the geometric earthenware to the masses.

Below:  Interiors with an outdoor feel and planters from Architectural Pottery.

Architectural Pottery’s iconic designs are characterized by sleek-lined vessels, devoid of ornamentation, and are usually large in scale. These simple, geometric forms – cones, cylinders, gourds, and totems – allowed architects and designers to incorporate these accessories seamlessly in their homes and buildings. Designers of Architectural Pottery included Malcom Leland, David Cressey, John Follis, and Rex Goode, who each created their own distinctive designs.

Below: Stunning historical images from the Vessel Company. Copyright Vessel USA.

Below: an original selection of planters from the Architectural Pottery catalog.

John Caldwell, who also worked with Architectural Pottery, noted “just about every significant architectural project of the 1950s had to have an Eames chair and an Architectural Pottery pot in it.”  Architectural Pottery could be seen in buildings of the most prominent architects of the time such as Rudolph Schindler, Richard Neutra, John Lautner and Pierre Koenig.  In 1955 the popularity of the pottery skyrocketed, which was noted in an order of 200 of the famous white cylindrical planters to accent the indoor-outdoor spaces of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

Below: from the collection and catalogs of Architectural Pottery.

The Architectural Pottery line is continued now by Vessel USA .  Vessel was founded in 1998 to revive stunningly simple planters and other ceramic designs that brought acclaim to the Architectural Pottery Collection. From materials and specifications to glazes and firing techniques, each piece is hand crafted with passion and integrity.

Today, Vessel USA Inc. continues to produce Modern Planters & Containers, Ceramic Sculpture and Garden Accessories from its studio in San Diego, California. Many design aficionados embrace these classic icons as well as limited new additions.

Some sources I used for this post : Architecturalpottery. com ,   A San Francisco clockwork Orange   and   A La Modern