Holiday Sale - Weekend 2 Preview

The second weekend of the Holiday Sale is just around the corner, so we're going to throw out a refresher for both returning a first time shoppers.

The Bauer Pottery showroom is where all of our "seconds" end up.  What are seconds?  They are the not-quite-perfect pieces that come out of the factory.  Nothing broken, nothing chipped, just a little glaze skip here, a pinhole there. Most of the time we have to point out the flaw to our customers.  Our standards are pretty high, if we do say so ourselves (and we do say so).



Since the pieces are not firsts, the prices aren't either.  Everything in the showroom starts at 30% off of retail.  If a piece is slightly less than a second, we'll knock off a few more dollars.  The added bonus at the Holiday Sale is that we double down on the discounts.  Last weekend was an additional 20% off of the discounted showroom price.  This weekend, that discount goes up to 25%.

Another reason to come to the Holiday Sale this weekend?  Grilled cheese!

It's been over 20 months since their last visit, but the Grilled Cheese Truck will be making another stop at the showroom this Saturday, from 11am to 2pm.  That means buttery crunchy bread, melty cheese, tomato-y soup and so much more deliciousness.

What's that?  You don't live near Southern California, but you still would like to shop for seconds?  We have you covered.  Starting on December 19th, we'll post a selection of seconds on our web store.  Since it takes a bit more work to move pieces back to the factory to pack and ship, the discounts aren't quite as deep, but you're still getting a great deal.  The only possible downside is that the online seconds will not ship until after the first of the year.  Just think of it as an after-Christmas sale that you get to shop before Christmas.

Subscribe to our email list, keep checking our Holiday Sale page or like us on Facebook for all of the updates and news about all of the holiday sales.

Holiday Sale - Weekend 1 Review

It seems like just two weeks ago it was Thanksgiving and now we're already into the the thick of the Christmas season. One weekend down and one (or is it two?) more to go for the annual Holiday Sale. The first weekend was a great success for both Bauer and for our customers, who made off with some beautiful pottery at a great price.



It's always nice to seem familiar faces who come by year in and year out and we're always glad to welcome the newcomers to the showroom. If you're in town and can stop by, please come visit us this weekend.



We had two great food trucks over the past weekend. Lidia's Dominican Kitchen was here on Saturday serving up great Dominican food. I had a Patacon Pisao, a pork sandwich, with plantains in the place of bread. Sunday, the Crispy Waffle & Frite truck made a lunch stop, serving up Liège (a.k.a. Belgian) waffles, in both sweet and savory varieties. The special Bacon, Brie & Basil waffle was great and if you like sweet, do not miss the Speculoos n' Cream.

Scroll down for a few more images from this past weekend...


Though there's plenty of pottery to go around, there's always a few who arrive before the doors open.


Moments after the doors open.

Lidia's Dominican Kitchen & the Patacon Pisao



Crispy Waffle & Frite truck and their Bacon, Brie & Basil Waffle


I get to include a picture of this pooch, the sweetest Blue Heeler named Cookie, because there's a Ringware Dog Bowl behind her.

For more details including hours, directions and more, please visit our Holiday Sale page.

Home By Sunset Collection Spring Sale

For a limited time, prices for the entire Home By Sunset Collection are reduced by 30%. Take advantage of these Spring prices while you're shopping for Mother's Day or planning your 2011 garden. Sale runs through Mother's Day, Sunday, May 8th, 2011.

View a slideshow of the collection below, or just click now and start filling your home and garden with beautiful pieces from our Home By Sunset Collection.



Click the "expand" button in the bottom, right hand corner for a beautiful, full-screen slide show!

March 2011 Showroom Sale with the Ragin' Cajun

Are you ready for the first Showroom Sale of 2011?



Are we?


Regardless, the doors of the Showroom will swing open this coming weekend. As always we'll have great deals on factory seconds from the Bauer Pottery and Russel Wright® American Modern® dinnerware lines.


Serving lunch from 11am-2pm will be the Ragin' Cajun Cafe on Wheels. You may remember them from such television shows as the Food Network's "The Great Food Truck Race". They'll be letting the bon temps and the shrimp po' boys roulez in the parking lot for all of you hungry shoppers.





Shrimp Po' Boy


If you'd like a virtual experience of the Showroom Sale, take a look at this slide show we put together via our Flickr page. It's a collection of shots from sales over the past year or so.

Full details, including dates, times, directions and more are available on the Showroom Sale page.

(Ragin Cajun truck and food photos by Guzzle & Nosh)

New (Old) Nesting (Mixing) Bowls

Take a deep breath.

Clear your head.

This is going to be one of those things.

Let's start with a happy new year to everyone! Most people get a little lull after the first of the year. We're into the third week of January and we're just now wrapping up all of our post-holiday sale shipping. The sheer volume of orders coupled with the fact that heavy rains here in Southern California took out most of our phone service and all of our internet connection at the factory and we've had a heck of a 2011 so far.

Now let's get to the exciting and confusing news. We've got a new item to introduce to you. Actually, it's not a new item in that it's both a vintage Bauer design as well as a piece we've been selling for several years now. Plus, it's not just one item but six.

We're very happy to finally launch* the Bauer Classic Style Mixing Bowl set on our web site. As you may know, we've been selling four sizes of what have been alternately called "Mixing Bowls," "Nested Mixing Bowls" or "Nesting Bowls." We will continue to make and sell this style, which going forward will be called "Bauer 2000 Mixing Bowls." They will continue to be available in the four sizes (7, 8, 9 & 10 inch) and 15 colors.


Bauer Classic Style Mixing Bowls: #9 Bauer Yellow, #12 Bauer Orange, #18 Turquoise, #24 Federal Blue


Bauer 2000 Mixing Bowls: 10" French Blue, 9" Lime Green, 8" Midnight Blue, 7" Chartreuse

The "new" set of bowls will be called the "Bauer Classic Style Mixing Bowls." This set will be available in six sizes and 15 colors. The Classic Style Bowl sizes are distinguished by numbers on the underside of each bowl. The larger the number the smaller the bowl, thus the #30 bowl is the smallest, and they continue up through #24, #18, #12, #9 with #6 as the largest. The middle four bowls (#24, #18, #12 & #9) are essentially same size as the four pieces in Bauer 2000 set of bowls.



Why are we causing all of this confusion? Well, when we started reproducing the mixing bowl set, the models were not as exact a reproduction of the ringware bowl set as we had hoped. Regardless of how we felt about them, they were still very popular. The Sundance catalog featured them for several years and we still sell many of them every month.

While the original bowls were flying off the shelves, we went back to the drawing board, or rather our model-maker's table, and made a new set of mixing bowls. These bowls reproduced the vintage bowls much more accurately. The rings were thicker, the rim was less flared out and the overall shape was more round and full. Both sets are lovely and most people can't really see much of a difference until they're side by side and we point out them out.

The easiest way to distinguish between the two styles is to turn one over and look at the bottom mark. A Bauer 2000 bowl reads "BAUER POTTERY LOS ANGELES" around the outside with "2000" stamped across the middle. A Classic Style bowl reads "BAUER POTTERY USA" round the ring and is also stamped with a "2000" across the middle, but below the "2000" is the size of the bowl: 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 or 30.


Bauer 2000 Mixing Bowl bottom mark


Bauer Classic Style Mixing Bowl bottom mark

So, why keep the first set of bowls if the second version is a more accurate reproduction? There are a couple reasons. The first being that a lot of people bought the Bauer 2000 set and sometimes want to add to their set or replace a broken or lost piece. We'd hate to leave all those people with no recourse but to buy a whole new set of bowls. Second, the pieces in the two sets cannot be mixed with one another and still nest properly. A Classic #12 does not sit properly inside a Bauer 2000 10 inch bowl and so forth.

Hopefully, this clarifies rather than confuses the situation. We are very excited to finally make these bowls more widely available. Please feel free to give us a call or send email with any questions you might have about our nested mixing bowls.

To shop for either style of Nested Mixing Bowl, click here now.




*Extra points to those who noticed that the Classic Style Bowls have been the header image for the Bauer blog since it launched.