This is a picture of my dad, John Secord. This is the only time in my life I have not seen him with a moustache. It is a close up image of him from a newspaper article when he first started in the ceramic industry and made molds.
This is the article from that close up picture. My dad set up a barn board booth at a convention in Ontario in 1970 for their company White Oak Pottery. This is how Masterline Molds began, as a ceramic company that my Nana owned called White Oak Pottery. It was a curio shop and ceramic studio in Oakville, Ontario. My parents bought the business and moved it to their farm in Acton, Ontario wher...e they started creating unique design based ceramic products.
My father learned mold making from an English Pottery maker and from their they began a business. Their studio was in a barn near their farmhouse, furnished with kilns and freshly made blocks that formed the molds that the created the finished product. Sharon had learned about formulating clay and glazes and so they started to design items they enjoyed with a Canadian style. Members from a Japanese Trade Delegation arrived at the booth and placed an initial order of 160 items that they were going to sell at the World's Fair Expo in Japan (1970) for Canada Week. The item was an earthenware ceramic Maple Leaf dish with multi-coloured glazes done in a technique my mother created.
The order grew with incredible rate. The Canadian Government had asked for their products to travel through the southern United States on a promotional campaign for trade commerce between Canada and the United States. The ceramic molds were made in the Masterline Molds style of ceramic molding and the finished product was innovative. The Maple Leaf dish was one item of many....
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