"Let the dead past bury its own!"
Cati Porter's family made their home in the sprawling Gateway Cities of southeastern Los Angeles. In the early 1970s, just as she was entering childhood, her parents' marriage was crumbling and she began to spend more time with her maternal grandparents in their tiny Bellflower duplex, wholly unaware that the man she called Grandpa was in fact her grandmother's second husband.
The ceramics that decorated the apartments where Cati lived were just more to be dusted during Saturday morning chores until one day her mother brought down the bright green and red lobster-handled serving bowl from atop the fridge. In it were dusty yellowed newspaper clippings about her mother's late father, Brad Keeler, a prominent early 20th century ceramist. His death had sent the family into a downward spiral, but his continued presence in their lives had been hiding in plain sight all along. This opened the door to a past Cati hadn't known was there.
Brad in turn was the son of another prominent ceramist, Rufus B. Keeler, renowned for his contributions to California's Golden Era of tile. Cati learns of an upcoming talk about her famous great-grandfather. The speaker is a charismatic self-appointed 'expert' on her family, and the present owner of the Keeler family home in South Gate. This house that her mother's father grew up in was designed by Rufus and built as a ‘salesman’s sample’ of everything that architectural tile could be. Something drives her to learn all she can about her family history. Could there have been a version of the past where Brad lived to see his daughter grown?
Newton's third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The potter shapes the clay. What are the forces that shape a life?
"Cati Porter is an intrepid detective, looking both outward, exploring the history of her famous ceramist grandfather and great grandfather, and inward, investigating her own desire for understanding and connection. This book is full of gorgeous, moving meditations on family, creativity, 'our so called safe and perfect bodies,' and the very nature of time.
Gayle Brandeis
"Deeply suspicious of lore, this is not a romanticized foray into her family’s past; rather, Clay Bodies is a meditation on the fallibility of what we uphold as history, the mysteries our ancestors leave behind, and the ways the places they inhabited—and the objects they made—can shape our understanding of home, identity, and belonging. As Cati Porter comes to terms with aging, she invites us along for her explorations into archives and across landscapes to piece together her ancestors’ lives."
"'The closer I get to my expiration date, the more alive the dead feel to me,' Porter writes in Clay Bodies. Part mystery, part meditation, Porter lovingly and thoughtfully explores the question of legacy and how we become who we are. This family story speaks to all who search for meaning and connection."
Samantha Dunn
Cassandra Lane
Excerpts
Click on the links below to read the full chapter excerpts.
The Garden of Memory
“It’s been at least a decade since we last made the hour-long drive to Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, long enough that I’d forgotten what the key looked like. My younger self must have predicted this, folded the blue, red, and yellow child’s name sticker on its head, connected it to a Marvelous Mom keyring, knowing this day might come."
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Click Here to Read the Excerpt
Naming the Dead
"Some family stories lodge in the brain like a burr. What part of the story is fiction and which is fact? What makes them true is the extent to which they are repeated, but like that telephone game, the more they’re repeated, the more they change. Who was Great Grandpa Rufus’ mother?"
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Brad Keeler's Lost Bronze Period
"There are questions surrounding several photographs in a crumbling family photo album. One question has to do with a photo of eleven presumably bronze statuettes that look eerily similar to the famed Oscars of the Academy Awards. Family lore is that Grandpa Brad had a hand in designing the first statuettes."
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The major players of Clay Bodies
Clay Bodies is a hybrid memoir, in this case meaning it incorporates significant historical research and the slice of Cati Porter's story it tells is deeper than it is wide, going back five generations. Her Keeler family lineage starts with Rufus E., but the story actually begins with his son B.B., father of Rufus the "tile wizard", who in turn was the father of Brad, her mother's father.
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Bradley Burr Keeler's first job was for Phillips Bronze & Brass in Los Angeles where he worked on bronze sculptures like this one of John G. Bullock of Bullocks department stores for the iconic Bullocks Wilshire. The firm also produced the 1934 Oscar statuettes.
Rufus Bradley Keeler studied ceramic engineering at the U. of Illinois then came back to California and worked for Steiger in South San Francisco and Carnegie in Corral Hollow before going to work as a draftsman for Gladding, McBean, in Lincoln.
Brad only had the opportunity to work with his father for a few years before Rufus was gone, but learned enough and then some to parlay that into a successful career in ceramics, working for Padre, Evan K. Shaw, and his own line that began as a backyard operation which grew into a successful nation-wide business concern.
Rufus came to ceramics through the terra cotta industry, becoming expert at the science behind the art. He was also a skilled artist and draftsman. He founded Southern California Clay Products, later reorganized into CALCO, and was hired by Mae Rindge to operate Malibu Potteries.
In 1952, at the height of Brad Keeler Artwares popularity and on the cusp of opening a new state-of-the-art factory in San Juan Capistrano, Brad died of a heart attack, leaving Catherine a widow with three minor children. The youngest, Heather, was only four years old.
In 1934, after the closure of Malibu Potteries due to irreparable fire damage and the effects of the Great Depression, Rufus died of what was deemed heart failure but which was preceded by exposure to an uncapped cyanide bottle. This left Mary a widow with three minor children, the youngest, Phil, was only six.
