Winfield Pottery

Winfield Pottery

was founded in Pasadena in 1929 by Leslie Winfield Sample. With just one kiln he produced a line of distinctive art pottery and in the evenings ran the "School of Clayworking." In 1935 Winfield Pottery moved to a larger Pasadena facility and designerMargaret Mears Gabriel joined the company. Square-shaped dinnerware, the first made inCalifornia, was unveiled in 1937, as was the bamboo embelishments the company becameknown for.Leslie Sample died in 1939 and Gabriel and her husband took over operations of WinfieldPottery. They opened a new larger Pasadena plant in 1941 and added more dinnerwarepatterns. Following World War II the Gabriel's faced a huge backlog of orders, so licensed the"Winfield China" name to American Ceramic Products of Santa Monica, while marking theirPasadena production as "Gabriel Porcelain."Production of Winfield China remained high through the forties and early fifties, but afterimported china reappeared on the market business slowed. The Pasadena plant was closed in1962. Some dinnerware marked Winfield was still produced in Santa Monica until that plantclosed in 1967.