Rio Hondo Pottery
I ordered this adorable salt and pepper shaker set off eBay a few days ago. I wasn't looking for them, I was trying to identify some items I'd bought and saw a listing for Rio Hondo dog salt and peppers. I knew Rio Hondo made dogs, I had two already, as well as a chipmunk, but didn't know they made salt and peppers! The hydrant is a regular shaker size, but to make the scale work they made the dog bigger than I'd expected. He's about 4" long.
Rio Hondo was a California pottery in El Monte, CA from 1939 to the mid 1950's. I've recently mentioned here that after WWII the Japanese ceramics industry was the first to make a comeback, with help from the U.S. These and European imports were cheaper, so many California potteries went out of business. Also, the popularity of plastic was arising at the same time. The Los Angeles area alone was home to over 300 potteries then. Now there are about a dozen. Rio Hondo is now quite collectible, but not out of my reach.
So, I now have two vintage salt and pepper shaker sets of a dog peeing on a hydrant!
Here are my other Rio Hondo pieces.
St. Vincent de Paul for 50 cents.
A year later, St. Vincent de Paul for $2.00. They raised their prices considerably!
Res-Q Ranch - I can't tell you how much it was, as here you pile up things and are given one cheap price. Do you know how to tell a chipmunk from a golden mantle ground squirrel (the sort out west, that people usually call "chipmunks")? If there are stripes on the face, it's a chipmunk. Golden mantle ground squirrels only have stripes on their backs. Which leads me to wonder, why don't Chip and Dale have facial stripes if they're supposed to be chipmunks?
I think we only have one chipmunk in New York, the Eastern chipmunk. And they love our yard. We also only have grey squirrels although, when I lived in New York City (some 150 miles from us) I remember there being black squirrels also. My understanding is they are the same species, just a color variation. I guess also having only one kind of hummingbird, one kind of jay and one kind of cardinal also makes things easier here in the East.
ReplyDeleteI've heard that about squirrels, I think from an article about how they are different colors on different sides of the Grand Canyon. Incredibly, my neighborhood has NO squirrels! There are in other parts of town. Red and grey. We had lots of red in CA. We get mostly scrub jays, with the occasional western blue jay, the crested one. No cardinals at all. I read one was seen in OR, once. I wonder if it mistakenly got caught in a moving van or train car and ended up here?
DeleteWhen you've got nothing but time to complete something, it'll get pushed to the back burner. Congrats on the new acquisitions.
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly right! I started off the pandemic deciding to finish painting my kitchen cabinets. I did some, then for some reason stopped. I never have finished them!
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