LaGardo Tackett

I started this blog September 6, 2010. Some of you have been readers since the beginning. Others have come on board later. From now through the end of the month, I'm going to be on a short blogging break. Not only am I in the middle of a big volunteer project, I'm also trying to help get the new store open, so I've decided share some of my favorite posts from the past four years. I'll throw in a few new photos for you longtime supporters who read the posts when they were first published.


(First posted 7/20/2012)

LaGardo Tackett (1911-1984) was born in Henderson, Kentucky. His father was a grocer, and later in life Tackett, who preferred to be called Tack, explained that his unusual first name came off a can of tomatoes from his father's store.

As a young man, he entered Indiana University to study geology but left school after two years and married Virginia Lee Roth, whom he had met there. In 1937 they moved to New York, and Tackett got a job with the department store giant The May Company. By the early 1940s, he became the interior promotion director, which necessitated a move to the company headquarters in Los Angeles.

He was drafted during World War II but returned home in 1945 and used the GI Bill to take formal pottery classes. He later taught at the California School of Art, including a course he taught at his own kiln in Pasadena. He mentored several of his students, including John Follis and Rex Goode. His work, along with that of Follis and Goode, as well as Malcolm Leland and David Cressey, was discovered by entrepreneurs Max and Rita Lawrence, who started Architectural Pottery. The pieces designed for this company became favorites of the architects who designed Case Study houses. Architectural Pottery is still available today through VesseL USA.

Tackett Associates was started in 1953, and Tack and Virginia began a large-scale pottery business. For a brief time in 1953, Kenji Fujita joined the company. Later the Tacketts became friends with Paul Schmid of Schmid International, a porcelain manufacturing company based in Boston. As a result of this friendship, in 1956 the Tackett family moved to Kyoto, Japan. During the two years they were there, Tackett moved his focus from hands-on production to design. The Tacketts returned to the United States in 1958 and started a design firm but moved back to Japan in 1960, this time to Tokyo.

His earliest foodware design was the chocolate brown Rockingham line with accompanying fish motif plates. He soon moved from terracotta to porcelain, for which he had a special respect. He created a number of  sets for espresso and coffee, as well as liquor decanters. His Sandpiper cruets took the form of stylized birds. He designed canisters in the form of globes and cylinders, many with a characteristic toggle handle. Many of his designs for Freeman-Lederman were white glazed spirit bottles, often with a large red dot and whimsical script. His anthropomorphic Black Russian was a decanter created to promote Kahlua. His humorous Egghead containers were sold in the back of Playboy and Esquire magazine as bedside condom holders; they stand 8-12" tall and are sometimes referred to as "stash holders." One of his last collections was an ice cream and candy service in white with brightly colored vertical stripes.

In 1961 Tackett and his family returned from Japan and settled in Connecticut. He still had a business arrangement with Schmid International and commuted to Boston for meetings. He also became active arranging programs at the Brookfield Craft Center, which had been founded in 1954 to preserve and encourage fine craftsmanship in Connecticut. In the late 1970s, Tackett suffered a stroke, and his wife Virginia was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Biographical information about Tackett is difficult to find, but Dr. F. Peter Swanson wrote a fascinating article about his life that I used for this post. If you want to know more, I encourage you to read his fascinating account.

From connecticutexplored.org

LaGardo "Tack" Tackett and his wife Virginia
research-arm.blogspot.com

Architectural Pottery planter
wright20.com

Architectural Pottery totems
dwell.com

Architectural Pottery planters
2modern.com

My Architectural Pottery planter
houzz.com

Lustreware pitcher by Rockingham
etsy.com - Owliceandstone

Espresso set for Schmid International
etsy.com - Modernismus

Fish plate made with Kenji Fujita
eastofborneo.org

Sandpiper cruet with Kenji Fujita
etsy.com - modernform

Cookie jar
modcats.com

Egghead condom holder
originally sold through Playboy and Esquire
1stdibs.com

Black Russian Kahlua decenter
etsy.com - bergenhouse

Tackett marking
fleasyads.com