The Continuing Mystery of Brad Keeler and Art Bronze

Recently I learned where the John G. Bullock bronze bust wound up: a Macy's in Pasadena which has been kept in its original condition from when it first opened as a Bullock's in 1947. I don't know when, but at some point the Bullock bust moved from the Los Angeles Wilshire Bullock's to this Pasadena on Lake Ave one, where it sits along the wall in a hallway toward the restrooms in the basement.

Now knowing where it is, I couldn't resist the urge to go find it and see it in person. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to see the signature on the back but I figured I could get up close and personal with it, at the very least. Which I did. 

Of course I posed with it. I tried to replicate my grandfather's pose, but a) I'm shorter, and b) the bust is on a higher table, so most of the results look like me on my tippy toes straining to put my elbow on his head. This was the closest approximation I could get in a semi-relaxed pose. 

Further, I was able to (gently, gingerly) pull the bust away from the wall enough to see the signature on the back! This was super exciting because it was confirmation of what I believed I already knew. 

It's a little hard to read, but it says, "Keeler Art Bronze Fndy". This was a thrill, because my mom remembers seeing the signature when she was a young woman shopping for a bridesmaid's dress for her middle brother's second wedding, to Auntie Judy, with Grandma Catherine at that Bullock's in Downtown Los Angeles. 

But here's the twist: On the way home, I decided to run a google search of "Keeler Art Bronze" to see if that might bring up other works he was involved with, and what I found was surprising indeed. 

Research on my family connection to the Oscars led me to learn more about Guido Nelli, the first bronze foundry to cast the original Oscars. Well, Nelli happened to have a partner. His name was Fred E. Keeler. Keeler was a partner in Nelli's California Art Bronze Foundry and he had his own: Keeler Art Bronze Foundry. I know these things because of archives on the web.

The Gilcrease Museum, aka the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, is home to the archives of the Charles M. Russell research collection. In this collection are documents outlining a relationship between Russell, a sculptor, and Nelli and Keeler, the bronze foundry where Russell's sculptures were cast. Where Keeler is mentioned, he is named as the Keeler Art Bronze Foundry. 

Coincidence? Did Brad, working for Phillips, just happen to give his work the same exact name? Or is there another piece of the puzzle I have yet to uncover?

My first thought was somehow that Fred Keeler might be a relative, but if he is, it's not clear or direct. My family tree on Ancestry has no one in it named Fred, and Fred's has none of the same distant family that I would expect to find. There are no Rufuses, for instance, and no Josiah. But he does go way back to the Keeler Tavern in Connecticut. So even assuming for a minute that there is some genetic connection, there's no evidence that the two men knew each other. But, weirdly coincidental, Fred Keeler also was involved in ceramics. He ran Empire China in Burbank. There is even a Keeler Street. And, later, he became the founder of the now infamous Lockheed Aircraft Company. 

I am so confused! 

If it weren't for the family photographs, I would have attributed this bust to Fred Keeler's short-lived Keeler Art Bronze Foundry. But I have the pictures to prove my grandfather's involvement. So there remains the mystery. 

Did Brad work for Fred, too? Did Fred and Rae Warren Phillips work together too? There is that Oscars connection, the brief contract that moved from Nelli to Phillips in 1935. 

Clearly there is more research to do. I'll leave you with this clipping announcing the launch of the unveiling of the bust, naming the sculpters as Holger and Helen Jensen. 

Oscars in the Family Album

Excerpt from Clay Bodies:

Among my grandmother’s things from her life as Mrs. Brad Keeler is a photograph of eleven presumably bronze statuettes that look eerily similar to the famed Oscars of the Academy Awards. Family lore is that Grandpa Brad had a hand in designing the first statuettes. But is it true? Here’s what I know: 

 In spite of other assertions that Brad’s first job was for Padre Potteries, it appears that his first first job was working for the Phillips Bronze and Brass Corp. studios, which was owned and operated by Rae Warren Phillips, a friend of his father’s who is named on his patent for a specialized clay-cutting apparatus that is intended to neatly cut square architectural tiles, thus saving the ceramist the tedious work of hand-cutting. Rae, or R.W., was the metallurgist who knew how to cast shapes in various metals, particularly bronze, and he was the craftsman behind Phillips Bronze and Brass.

Brad sculpted and created large-scale works in bronze including the bust of John Bullock, founder of Bullocks Department Store, and some larger-than-life parrot sculptures that are as tall as I am. There is a photo of him, elbow propped on the head of Bullock, his other hand on his hip, whole body cocked to the side in a confident posture, a literal feather in his cap.

And there are the photographs of the Oscars.

Official written history is that George Stanley sculpted the original statuette from a sketch by director Cedric Gibbons, and the first of what would be many contracts with foundries went to Guido Nelli, an Italian immigrant who lived from 1888-1952. The California Art Bronze Foundry was co-owned by Nelli and a man named P. E. Keeler. 

Keeler. Coincidence? Probably.

There is no one so far that I can locate in the family tree with those initials who lived during that period in that place. 

What I have sussed out so far: Nelli was the creative artist and craftsman behind the foundry. Coming to Los Angeles by way of entering the United States through New York by way of Petrograd, Russia and originally from Rome, Nelli introduced the lost wax process of casting metal sculptures. 

[Mom, while working for Lynx making golf clubs, learned the lost wax process of casting in metal. It is something she has spoken of with some pride.]

Nelli cast the Oscar designed by Stanley and presumably held the contract until the Great Depression forced him to close down the foundry, and for the duration of World War 2, due to a metal shortage, the Oscars were made of plaster. After the war would put us into 1945, and by that time Brad would have been in his thirties and well beyond his early work sculpting for R. W. Phillips at Phillips Bronze and Brass (also known as Phillips Bronze Corporation, or, as I recently learned, Phillips Bronze Bushings Works). So I begin to wonder, did Brad have a hand in the plaster version of the statuettes? That would have been 1944, according to the timeline. 

Letters from Brad to Catherine dated 1942, the summer they rented the Laguna Beach beach house on the Pacific Coast Highway, the one that is now painted a periwinkle blue and owned by a chiropractor, was the summer she was pregnant with her middle child, a son, Patrick. They were already living at the Delay Drive house. On the census for 1940 he is listed as a ceramist and Catherine as a finisher, and a lodger named Elizabeth is with them and she is also employed as a finisher. On his draft card from the same year, he lists his employer as Padre Potteries in Los Angeles. So it would seem by 1942 he was building his own pottery in the backyard on Delay Dr., and already working with James Webster on the Bradster works. James is referenced multiple times in the letters home when talking about his work. 

Looking at the photo of the Oscars that I have, I compare that against a timeline of what the Oscars have looked like. The photo I have is clearly different from the war-time plaster Oscar but identical to one that Katharine Hepburn received in 1933. Identical. 

So where was Brad in 1933? He would have been twenty years old. That would have been two years before his marriage to Catherine, one year before his father Rufus died. Brad had two years of college, according to voting records. That would make the timing of his first job, around age 20, about right. 

In fact, though, all of the earliest statuettes match the ones in the photograph. But Brad would only have been sixteen years old in 1929, so it’s unlikely he worked for Guido Nelli at that time. Could there have been a bidding war for the right to produce the statuettes? 

What I can tell you is that internet says Brad was employed by Phillips circa 1931. The timing is right. And Nelli closed the foundry during the Great Depression. It couldn’t have been 1929, when he was producing the first statuettes, but I can find no record of his producing them after that. And while the Depression lasted until 1939, when World War 2 brought us out of it, it’s unlikely he would have closed down so close to the end—surely it was more toward the middle? 1934ish? Or even earlier, maybe? 

Let’s say hypothetically that Phillips outbid him for the Oscars and produced them in 1933. 

It’s possible.

An avenue for further research. 

What I know is this: We have an original photograph of the Oscar statuettes. In the photograph are eleven statuettes. The statuettes match the design of the originals, including one won by Katharine Hepburn in 1933. Brad worked for Phillips Bronze and Brass for his first job, which would have been around that same time. He would have still been living at home. By 1935 he was married and living at another family property, on Delay Drive in Los Angeles, and working for Padre.

Was Brad involved with the production of the first Oscars? Maybe not the first, but close.

**

Postscript: It is the following morning and I am thumbing through the photographs and find one that I had previously overlooked: three more statuettes, two with engraved plaques that read,

Academy of

Motion Pictures

Arts and Sciences

First Award

1934

So there it is. 

Although the one without the placard is on a very tall base, unlike any of the others I have seen thus far. So the mystery remains.

***

Post-Post Script

My continual searching on the internet eventually turned up an article, "The Oscar Statue Gets a Makeover", on the Los Angeles Magazine site circa 2016. In the article is the following sentence:

In 1935 the Academy switched to Phillips Bronze Bushing Works near Central and Washington for one year.

So there's the answer. I still have many questions, like, why? And why only a year? Where did the author get his information? 

It's a Bust

Meet John G. Bullock, founder of Bullock's Department Store. For people of a certain age, you might remember shopping here, especially those in Southern California. I don't have memories of Bullock's, per se, but I do remember it as an option at the mall. It closed its doors forever in 1995, but when it opened in 1907 it was glamorous. 

Here is in an inside joke: When my husband and I go out to antique stores in search of Brad Keeler Artwares, if we don't find anything, my husband will declare it "a bust" to which I unfailingly reply, "no, it's a torso". I'm the one in the family who makes the dad jokes. But in this case, it really is just a bust, not a torso. 

Yes, there's a Brad Keeler connection.

Brad graduated high school in 1931. Upon graduation, and even before, he lucked into some industry jobs thanks to his famous father, Rufus Bradley Keeler, whether that be cleanup work on the Malibu Potteries after a fire, or in the case of this bust, working for Phillips Bronze Bushing Works.

Rufus and a man named Rae Warren Phillips became acquainted circa 1909, the year that Rae Warren married Rufus' first cousin Jennie. Despite being in different fields--metallurgy and ceramics-- the two men occasionally worked together on projects, even going as far to apply for and receive a patent for a tile making apparatus. 

Both men, now married and both with sons, continued to make their way in life. Eighteen year old Brad, having demostrated a gift for drafting and modeling, began working for Rae as a modeler. There are large bronze parrots (as in, 5' tall!) that have been attributed to Brad, but which are signed simply Phillips. We can only make assumptions based on the similarities between Brad's later ceramic parrots and these early bronze ones. However, there's more data when it comes to the bust of John G. Bullock.

Here is a photo from the family album: Brad Keeler leaning casually on the bust. My mom remembers, after her father died, while her brother Pat was engaged to his second wife, Judy, going with her mom to Bullocks Wilshire in Los Angeles and seeing the bust in person. And she remembers that it is signed Brad Keeler on the back.

It has occurred to me to wonder from time to time where that bust wound up, considering how long its been since Bullocks closed its doors. Google is not always helpful, until it is. You have to have the exact right search terms. And I have tracked it down. It's housed within a former Bullocks which is now a Macy's, on Lake Ave in Pasadena, down a hallway to the bathrooms. The store itself is a museum of sorts, with its original furniture and fixtures and artifacts from the golden age of Bullocks Department Store, including the bust.

Pasadena is about an hour away from house and its one of our regular haunts for looking for Brad Keeler Artwares. Next time we're in the area, I plan to make a pilgrimage to the bust. Sure, it's up against the wall now, so I may not be able to see his signature.

But I will know its there.

For next time: Brad Keeler and the 1935 Oscar statuettes. 

New(ish) article up in Atomic Ranch!

Hello dear readers,

Life sometimes gets the better of me so here it is five months later and I realize I never posted anything about the article I wrote for Atomic Ranch, "The Enduring Charm of Brad Keeler Artwares." Enjoy!

Clay Bodies: An Excerpt

Yesterday was the 110th anniversary of my grandfather Brad Keeler’s birth. Brad was my mother’s father, and his wife Catherine, my grandmother who I am named after and who I knew and loved. Brad died when my mom was four years old. Her memory of him is fragmented at best.

For the past ten years, I have been working--slowly--toward a book about him and his father before him, Rufus Keeler. It is my way of my excavating the family history, and examining it in the light.

The year 2022 saw an acceleration of this project, so now I am confident (knock on clay) that 2023 will be the year that I will finish the book, entitled Clay Bodies: The Brief Lives and Lasting Legacies of Rufus B. Keeler and Brad Keeler, Father and Son Ceramicists.

Periodically, I will be posting excerpts from the book. I invite my readers and Keeler ceramics collectors to share their thoughts and ask questions.

Click here to read today's excerpt, "Taking the Long Way Home," on Everyone the Same Soup.