Eleanore Welborn Plum Plate Monterey Disneyland 1954 Ceramic Saucer Walt Disney

Description

Eleanore Welborn Plum Plate Monterey Disneyland 1954 Ceramic Saucer Walt Disney
Eleanore Welborn Plum Plate Monterey Disneyland 1954 Ceramic Saucer Walt Disney
Vintage Americana Auctions by Saturday's Toys presents...
a 1954 / 1955 collectible ceramic plate featuring a still life fruit design..  from Eleanore Welborn Art Productions in beautiful Monterey, California
1955 was also the year when Welborn would experience her most notable contract as she launched the earliest (and most sought after) line of Disneyland souvenir ceramics.
Here, Welborn has designed a plate that was likely sold through her studio and gallery in Monterey.
Reverse side of the plate features the early Welborn art palette logo design; as used when Welborn relocated from her Seaside, California factory to her new production facility in the historic Monterey Canning Company on famed Cannery Row.
While her husband was serving in WWII, Eleanore had pursued her interest in formal art training.  She studied painting, illustration and water color under such eminent instructors as Rolf Stoll, Bill Eastman and Carl Gaertner.  After the war, as she and her husband settled in Oregon, Eleanore would explore her interest in ceramics through a local  ceramics teacher who had opened a hobby shop for loggers and farmers' wives.  After designing a plate of the county map, she was then invited to produce 3,000 of them for the County Centennial celebrations.  The plates sold for .00 each and Eleanore Welborn Ceramic and Art Studio was born.
Shortly thereafter, the Welborn family moved to Monterey where Eleanore produced her ceramics; first at her home; and then at the historic Casa Gutierrez Adobe as the first tenant in the building after it was acquired by the State of California in 1954. In more recent times, the adobe would serve as host for the west coast gallery of artist Thomas Kinkade.  Beginning in 1955, the Welborn studio in Monterey would take the name that would be forever associated with her Disneyland china:  Eleanore Welborn Art Productions, Monterey, California.
This porcelain saucer is approx. 5.5"; with hand-painted gold trim on a white base with still life decorative application (plums).
Still, in very good condition; no cracks, chips or crazing.  Among among the most highly prized collectibles from Eleanore Welborn... from the earliest days of her new ceramic arts studio in Monterey, California.
For one brief year, 1955 thru 1956, Eleanore Welborn would see her ceramics studio swell with spectacular growth and demand (expanding from her small ceramics studio to a large manufacturing space on Monterey's Cannery Row)... only to find those sales collapse the following year.  In the months following Walt & Lillian Disney's personal visit to inspect Welborn's Cannery Row offices and production factory, Disneyland management opted to send their souvenir china to be produced in Japan and the Welborn license ended at that time.
In addition to her own production of porcelain ceramics, it was Eleanore Welborn who developed the beautiful "Monterey Jade" ceramics that were first produced in her own studio. Not long after losing her Disney licensing agreement she then sold her rights to Monterey Jade pottery as she closed her studio. After a brief attempt to continue selling ceramic gifts at Fisherman's Wharf in Carmel / Monterey, Welborn moved to Southern California where she continued to teach art until her passing in 1973.
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Saturday’s Toys and Disneyana Auctions
was founded in 1994 by Southern California author and Disney historian, Dave Mason. Soon after eBay's launch the following year, Saturday's Toys was among the first Disneyana specialists to strategize in embracing this rapidly developing technology. Having delivered over 10,000 coveted Disney treasures since then, Saturday's Toys is pleased to partner with researchers, collectors and friends throughout the world with a shared interest in the preservation of authentic and accurate Disney history.
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