For the life of me, I can’t recall where or when I found the pot, but I’m certain a cosseting dealer at some hodgepodge stand in Manhattan or L.A. must have told me it was an object effort to get U.S. support for England as it was attacked by Germany.
Five inches tall and made in Staffordshire, like thousands of others, it was daubed with childish flowers by women in city factories. The teapot, as teapots go, is hideous, but I counted out my money and carried it home.
I’m listening to Morrissey as I write. His voice is in Manchester, an hour from Staffordshire by car, less by rail. He sounds like a guy who brewed, not poured.
In the early ’40s, the U.S. sent cargo ships across to carry food and supplies, and if they survived the U-boats, they were loaded with stuff like English pottery to serve as ballast to make the trip back, the beleaguered nation having nothing else extra to send.
That’s what I’ve read, though it sounds iffy — why not haul bricks or Christmas fruitcakes to us? Teapots like this are light and chip in a second — especially the gold-rimmed spouts, which seem to call for unusual attention. Mine dribbles miserably, as I expect they all do.
The bottom is more interesting, as is usually the case. Look at the base.
“Escorted?” We see a Stafford knot, which is a pretzel in my book, curling around a flag and one of those made-pathetic lions that has long stood for greedy, bloody imperialism. Cautious Americans were supposed to recognize these sentimental, degraded symbols and help.
This borrowed photo doesn’t show the base of my own pot, because we’re separated, for the time being, by the pandemic.
Yet mine has a history, including something personal. One of the only pieces I wrote professionally that was rejected, by an editor friend I saw recently at a dinner party given by my dear friend Bill Stern, was about this pot. Bill, as it happens, was an extraordinary collector and lover of ceramic dinnerware.
My torpedoed writing was perfectly seaworthy, escorted to port by me.
Daniel and I drink tea when we wake, not from this errant pot; we have dozens of teapots, which is sort of crazy. The one we use is a Depression-era, get-by-mail “favor” from Lipton Tea Company (talk about imperialism), manufactured by Hall China in East Liverpool, Ohio — no Beatles there. Glossy black glaze, with a weighty clay that retains the heat of the water. It won’t ding or break even if you throw it at some innocent wall. Better ballast for those freighters, I’d imagine, but they were going west, with desperate cargo.
Tea can be made in anything. But teapots claim a hold on brewing, actually dictate our needs and use. They are hell to design: guaranteed to drip. Ordinary ancient pots, Korean and Chinese, gave birth to and best most successors.
Now I will change the subject. During the times I visited dish-besotted Bill Stern, the friend I mentioned, in his apartment in Los Angeles, we would make tea-bag tea for breakfast in a gray pot designed in the 1960s by California designer Edith Heath. I feared that its ribbed, plastic-covered handle wasn’t sturdy enough to support the hot content, but we had dozens of cups from it over decades, even from Trader Joe’s teabags, as his neighborhood, and we, changed.
“What would you like for breakfast?”
Breakfast with Bill always felt special. Eggs? They were fried in a cast-iron skillet that was rinsed and maybe wiped, never washed. The Heath teapot, close by, was alway greasy from so many early meals, its surface sticky. If I got up before Bill did, I made the tea and tried to clean the pot.
Bill had the most beguiling smile when he served his ideal eggs and buttered sourdough toast. If I asked for yogurt before I visited, he bought it and made sure he went to Santa Monica for glowing berries to strew on top. He or I would run down and up the long stairs to pick up the New York and Los Angeles Times. He saved their plastic rain wrappers, shoving them in a large, low kitchen cabinet. The higher cabinets that held his Necco-wafer colored Vernonware (actually, many more teals and mule-browns in his plates than that) and the thick cowboy cups he liked for his tea, had earthquake locks, so random tremors wouldn’t throw his vintage piles onto the linoleum to shatter.
Sometimes he allowed me to assemble our meal, and I served. His pleasure was all I asked for.
“Jam?”
We had casual conversations then, about art, food, politics and being gay writers, at the wooden table, newspapers scattered, sunlit vines at the window and, hummingbirds, once in a great while.
Bill died a week after our last breakfast. We had both been restaurant critics. Wherever we were, dining with Bill was always what I’d call an adventure, because of what he thought about our particular table, the outside neighborhood, personal affairs, and how we often slightly disagreed. Eating together is a kind of knowledge.
At some aha moment, Bill decided to found The Museum of California Design. William H. Stern organized groundbreaking exhibitions. You can read his obituary here. He gazed at almost everything he gathered with a curious affection, as if the rescued past were looking fondly back at him.
Every day I make tea, which is every day, that’s what I recall.
I can’t tell what pot I have in hand.
Such a lovely piece. Sorry for your loss
Thank you so much, Harriet!
Lovely reminiscence, Jeff. Would like to know his “ideal egg” recipe. Hope all’s well.
Just butter-fried eggs, up, crispy edges, which were his ideal. When I poached and later made us slow-cooked eggs, he said he enjoyed them but always preferred his own, which was fine.
Oh so lovely, oh so poignant.
Miss you, miss Bill.
Since I haven’t lived in LA for so long, and haven’t seen Bill for almost as long, I still can’t feel his absence for real.
But I think about him almost every day. And the fact that I found the first affordable piece of Vernon (a Don Blandings Hawaiian plate, not really special, but I bought it to send to Bill anyway) just a couple of months before he left us.
I am so sad that the Museum of California Design will not survive him.
ps: I would love to read the rejected piece…
What you wrote here is already fascinating.
Hi! I can’t find the rejected piece, I looked. It’s on some floppy disk somewhere 🙂
One of my favorite Out There’s ever.
Jeff, Lovely piece to remember Bill by. He was a good Jewish boy who LOVED his bacon! Crispy and NOT greasy! Bill did not eat to live, he lived to eat! I met him through a mutual friend, John Moses, twenty one years ago. On his first visit to my home (a second floor duplex) without even knowing me his first words were : “where is the bathroom, I want to see the tiles!” He LOVED ceramics and knew just about everything there was about every type of pottery, of course, his favorite was California pottery, but he could tell you this or that about any piece made of clay. His knowledge was encyclopedic, yet he was not didactic about imparting his knowledge. A conversation with Bill was like a college course in the subject and it was always a pleasure to see his enthusiasm about the topic. Bill was more than a collector. He was a scholar and an archeologist. He sought out things at flea markets and antiques malls. A trip to Pomona with him was a ten stop deal. He had to go to EVERY shop we saw. Bill was a real raconteur and bon vivant. He was particular about food that to most would seem plebeian. He and I would have at least one monthly meal at a Cuban restaurant named: Versailles. Our joke was that we would call each other and make a “date” at Le Palais! It was fun watching him eat with gusto. When he came to dine with us at our home, my partner Louis would always get a kick out of how Bill loved grease! I would always have a separate spoon for him to scoop up the juice or grease of whatever meat I had cooked. Bill also always appreciated that I set his place setting at the table for a left handed person, which most folks never thought to do. To call him a “Renaissance man” may sound grand, but he was and he knew a lot about everything. I was with him at his last gig at Palm Springs Modernism. He was invited to have a booth for his museum: The Museum of California Design (MOCAD) this was his passion, this was his life. I was with him at Palm Springs in 2019 where he had a booth and that was a good show. I promised him then that I would volunteer for 2020 if he was invited back, he was. What was odd was that in 2020 the booth was always full and nobody looked at the exhibit! They came to talk to and regale Bill. He walked away with two requests to curate shows and the folks just kept on coming. Bill had just been through a rough patch with an allergy. He was not 100% but you would not know it. I spent four days with him there and he was able to hob-nob and network as I watched the booth. He came home at the top of his game, ready to give the world another blast of his passion. It did not happen. He left peacefully at his home in his bed a week and a half later. Looking at it: what a way to go! I had never seen him SO happy and energized. His passion had been fulfilled and his endeavor MOCAD was once again going to show the world everything about ceramics. Now that his physical being is gone, he has charged me with disseminating his beloved objects and cementing his legacy in the design and museum world. For me, it has been a tough go, but a sure one and it will happen. Bill’s books are here to stay and so are his beloved objects. Museums have been offered to pick from his holdings to augment their collections with his acumen and eye. The name Bill Stern will always be synonymous with erudition and illumination when it comes to ceramics. He could “sniff” out the gem at the bottom of the pile. He was a complicated man. He was a focused human being. He lived his life on his own terms. I guess one of our first conversations cemented our friendship. We both were (and I still am) staunch believers in design. That is to say, that everything we see, touch, use and wear all begin with an idea and then a drawing. Nothing just springs up out of nowhere! Someone has thought it out and worked it out. I remember that conversation fondly. I really won’t miss Bill too much as I see him in every object he taught me about. I am, Kene J. Rosa. Los Angeles.
Lovely lovely piece. Was just appreciating the turquoise refrigerator pitcher that Bill gifted us for our wedding. It gives me such pleasure, its slimness fitting easily into the frig. The colors of ceramics on his shelves also gave great pleasure, as did talking with him about so many things… the films he dubbed, the restaurants he loved, the literary programs at the library he attended. What a good man. Unbelievable that he has left us. So sorry for your loss.
Dear Jeff.
I am eagerly waiting for our next dinner or lunch together, to celebrate the AhA moment, the greasy pot, the huming birds through the window and the cow boys on the cup. Let ‘s have a virtual tour down memory lane in Bill’s appartment . Miss you, miss Bill.
je t’embrasse
François
Dearest Beloved Cousin Bill
I cannot wait until we are spending our birthday together again.
Come dicivi te, ti voglio tanto tanto bene. Cousin Margaret.