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TEPCO
Once a major West Coast producer of restaurant ware and El Cerrito's largest employer, Technical Porcelain and China Ware Company lives on in its legacy of sturdy dishes—and a beach full of shards.​ Given a near-obsession with industrial archaeology, there’s almost no end to my interest in TEPCO, or Technical Porcelain and China Ware Company, a major West Coast producer of decorative, durable hotel and restaurant ware that called El Cerrito home from about 1930 until its closure in 1968. TEPCO supplied not only the hospitality industry, but had contracts with the U.S. government to produce ware for the Navy, Army and Veterans Administration, and was, for years, El Cerrito’s largest employer. Potter John Pagliero, who immigrated to the United States from Italy in 1905, founded TEPCO in 1918 while working at a Richmond porcelain plant. Around that time he left his job to grow TEPCO, eventually building a factory on Kearney Street and Manila Avenue in El Cerrito—where the DMV stands today.

At its zenith, TEPCO offered about 50 patterns running the gamut from simple, like Pin Line, to slightly off the wall, like Palm, a loud, all-over affair with large palm leaves meant to appear raised in places—like plush carpeting. The American West was well-represented, with Broken Wagon Wheel, Ox-Head, Western Traveler and Branding Iron patterns, the latter reflecting a bit of whimsy in that the small branding irons encircling edges spelled out T-E-P-C-O.
Tropical designs, like Hawaiian, Bamboo and Palm, were almost certainly very popular during the post-World War II tiki period, which lasted roughly 20 years starting in 1945—though it began somewhat earlier in California—reaching a fever pitch in the late '50s to mid-'60s. Scotch Plaid was available if you needed tartan, and Confucius, a flowing, airbrushed Chinese landscape design of green, black and red, offered a striking option. Needles & Pine—an all-over design of pine branches loaded with thick cones and long needles. Advertised as “100 percent Vitrified”, after being formed, “greenware” was heat-dried, then fired twice; first in a 2400°F bisque kiln, and then, after being decorated and glazed, in a 2100°F glost kiln.