Animal Banks
I had a piggy bank as a kid. It was white, with flowers painted on its belly, a rubber stopper
underneath, so I could take out the coins and count them from time to time. Not that there was
much in it, mind you. Except for First Communion or Confirmation, we weren't on a cash economy,
back there on the farm. (And allowances were what happened to town kids...)
I always suspected it was a girl pig--it had a flower behind its ear. And though my big brother's
pig had flowers painted on it too, his had one of those New York cabbie hats, yellow, on its head.
Always found that vaguely dissatisfying.
So when I started making my own piggy banks, I did no flowers whatsoever. Just a wheel-thrown
body, handle-pulled legs and ears and tail, porcelain eyes. Oh, and the cork moved from the
belly up to the mouth, gave that flat-nose pig snout look.
After the pigs, I tried elephant banks, also thrown like bottles on the wheel, then tipped 90°,
with the legs and ears and tusks added later. The first ones were not entirely functional; I'd
neglected to include the cork hole, so you had to do the butter-knife-in-the-coin-slot thing.
I had to sell them off as Savings and Loans: You could put your money in but you couldn't get
it out again. Since then all of my banks have had no penalty withdrawal systems.
In their heyday, I had some 25 or 30 different styles on banks on the shelf. Some are still
boxed up in my shed, waiting for the person who can't live without a walrus or beaver bank.
In the meantime, I've slimmed down the regular line-up to six or so. It's kind of a mass
extinction, though oddly enough, this time the dinosaurs survived.
Our banks have wheel-thrown bodies, with handbuilt features added when they're partially dried
("leather-hard"). All feature a coin slot on top and a no-penalty withdrawal
system (okay, a cork or rubber stopper) for easy liquidity.
Regular bank patterns include classic Piggy banks, Elephants, Cats (in
three tiger patterns: Cobalt blue on white, Gold on white, and Brown on tan), Chickens
(for your nest egg), and for those inheriting old money, Tyrannosaurs, Stegosaurs and
Brontosaurs. Yes, I know, the official name is "apatosaur." But which would you
rather be, a "long neck" or a "thunder lizard?" I rest my case.
Blame it all on E. D. Cope and O. C. Marsh.
When the bottom dropped out of the bank market, back around the end of the last century,
I discontinued about two-thirds of the patterns--the whales, the penguins, ducks and beavers--and
sold off back stock at sub-prime mortgage prices. I finally settled on the half-dozen or so most popular
styles: Pigs, elephants, cats and chickens and several species of dinosaurs.
And there things would have stayed, except for one wholesale client, who kept ordering
discontinued bank styles. He was very persistent--or else working from a 10 year-old
product list. I finally gave in, made him a few of the old patterns, and rediscovered
frogs. I've been drawing them on pots for a while, even sculpted a few, and the additional
experience has translated into a new, more enchanting amphibian. A prince of a bank, which
is now once again a regular feature at Off Center Ceramics.
Who knows? Maybe next year, penguins...
Other animals may be special-ordered, price quoted on request. I've made an opposum (with prehensile
tail curled around her kit), armadillo, even a giraffe. The price for a special order will vary
with its complexity; the giraffe, with wheel-thrown neck, body, and all four legs cost about twice
the usual bank fee. But it was awfully cute. One thing about special orders--they can't
be done fast. Depending on where in my firing cycle I am it can be as little as two or as much
as six weeks before they're ready. Just so you know.
...the end.