It is a fairly common misperception that the work of the Mary Blakley Studio was solely that of Mary Blakley. I had the wonderful fortune to establish contact with a collector in Miami who has a varied collection of Tom’s critters and character plaques. She also has work by Mary, but I want to focus on Tom’s contributions to Mary Blakley Ceramics in this post. As I wrote in a previous post, Tom had a great sense of humor (he was a cartoonist, after all!) and he made some wonderfully whimsical pieces that were very popular with the public. I’ll post some of them here and save some for a later post. These are all small pieces, about 5″ wide by 8″ tall, at most. Some have MB buttons on them, some have whimsie stickers on the back and some have no identification at all. But the discerning collector of the work of Mary Blakley Ceramics has no trouble identifying pieces that came from the studio.

I’ve decided to call this “Baby’s Horse” because it looks like something that would be in a young child’s bedroom. It doesn’t have an MB button on it but it may have had a whimsy sticker on the back at one time.

Tom and Mary both made cats, but this one was made by Tom.

Isn’t this a great dog?

The fish was this big!!

The Ladies Professional Golf Association was founded in 1950, but I don’t know how many members it had in the early 1970s. Tom was a strong proponent of women’s rights and had fun making this plaque, no doubt.

Tom and Mary loved the Ed Sullivan Show and thought that the mouse, Topo Gigio, was a hoot. They had a dog named Topo Gigio – Topo for short. No doubt, this mouse was inspired by Topo Gigio.

Lots of people think raccoons are cute. I don’t, but if it sold, Tom made it. These critter plaques were inexpensive and Tom made thousands of them – they were a large part of the “bread and butter” of their business.

This pelican is an early one – the later ones had dark eyes, not blue. The white glaze is Frit 2106 with tin oxide added as an opacifier. I’ve seen this maker’s mark on a few pieces but it isn’t very common. It really doesn’t look like either of their handwriting, so I’m not sure that they signed it. Regardless, the piece was made by Tom Blakley – it is an authentic piece.

Another pelican – very unusual since its body is blue.

I’ll publish a piece about Tom’s character plaques next.