I’m not sure what Tom and Mary did to identify their work before 1966 – perhaps they signed the pieces or inscribed their names in the clay. Starting in 1966, though, as the business grew, Tom created a little sticker that was placed on the back of each piece. No doubt, many of the stickers came off because the surface of the weathered wood wasn’t conducive to them staying on. Others were eaten by various bugs. I don’t know how many pieces still have stickers on them but if you find one on a piece you own, it indicates that the piece was made after September, 1965 and as late as early 1973. The MB button (and other buttons, too) probably came into use around 1970-1971 but apparently Tom and Mary used up the existing stock of whimsie stickers, too. There doesn’t seem to be a way to definitively date a piece just by the presence of a button. A whimsie sticker does indicate that the piece was an early one, though. I imagine that the reason they started using the clay “mb” button was because it was glued on and more permanent. The whimsie stickers, if mounted on a very weathered piece of driftwood, had a tendency to come off.

I can identify the date when the sticker started to be placed on the backs of their pieces because of the use of the phrase “outdoor murals” in the text. That is a reference to the mural that Tom and Mary completed in September, 1965 for the Presbyterian Retirement Home in Winter Park, Florida. Tom was referring to the Fort Wayne Art School and his studying under George Grosz in NYC when he wrote “studied in Indiana, New York and Miami.”

Updated on February 7 and 20, 2015