American Bungalow Magazine - The Magazine published in the interest of preserving and restoring the modest American 20th Century Home, the Bungalow, and the rich lifestyle that it affords.

AB readers have been captivated the past three months by a couple of puckish footed mugs that appeared on the cover of Issue 61 (Spring ’09) and in the article “Marvelous Possessions” inside, which featured vintage clothier Kenneth Coit’s 1924 Craftsman mini-mansion and the eye-popping collection of antique furnishings and Americana with which he’s filled it. Several readers wanted to know where they could find the mugs. When we asked Coit, he said the potter, Vandergriff, “was popular locally in the ’70s, when his pieces were available in a Westport craft gallery called The Bird Lamp Company, long gone. His pieces turn up occasionally at garage and estate sales in Kansas City. But sorry, beyond that, I don’t have any leads.”

Undeterred, we managed to locate a Minnesota potter, Robert Briscoe, who had been an apprentice of James Vandergriff’s in the late ’60s. From Briscoe we learned that Vandergriff had given up pottery 30 or 35 years ago to start up Caprine Supply, a highly successful farming-supplies business in DeSoto, Kan.

Briscoe added that Mike Smith, a Kansas City potter who had been Vandergriff’s last apprentice and who still maintained contact with him, could probably give us more information. We left a message with the KC Clay Guild inviting Smith to contact us.

Bingo.

Micheal (sic) Smith apprenticed with Vandergriff from 1976 to 1978. During those years he—not Vandergriff, it turns out—created the mugs (adapted from one—in the middle, in the photo below—the owner of the Bird Lamp Company, Harry Ware, had acquired from a Texas potter whose name Smith doesn’t recall) to be sold at the now defunct Bird Lamp Company and at local art fairs. (Ken Coit says that since the mugs were sold at the Bird Lamp Company in the 70s and fit so well with Vandergriff’s other designs, he just assumed they were his.)

In addition to the footed mugs, the cover photo shows two more of Smith’s footed pieces—a cream-and-sugar set, standing on the shelf in the background. The bowl peeking out left foreground holding bananas (at right above) is a Vandergriff pot. Another Vandergriff pot, a casserole, sits beside the gong on page 59.

Smith was delighted that readers have asked about the pieces. He plans to revive them for Art Westport ’09, the annual festival where they first appeared 30 years ago.

He also said that Jim Vandergriff is enjoying a “grand retirement” restoring and riding his collection of vintage motorcycles.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 9:13 pm and is filed under Bungalow Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.