Art Chair Made From TEPCO Shards

Newly installed at the Richmond Museum of History is an usual piece of art that represents a reincarnation of El Cerrito's days as a motherlode of restaurant tableware.

In the museum's courtyard is a new chair sculpture made from shards of gathered from the beach near the Costco outlet on Central Avenue. The pieces were dumped there long ago by the TEPCO factory that once was one of El Cerrito's major industries.

The history museum commissioned Richmond artist Tina Amidon in January to do the tile mosaic chair, which she formally presented to the museum as the “TEPCO Chair” on Saturday, Oct. 8. TEPCO stands for the Technical Porcelein and China Ware Co., an El Cerrito factory that closed in 1968 and was at one time the largest restaurant-ware maker west of the Mississippi, according to Sandi Genser-Maack, Richmond collector of TEPCO pieces and a local TEPCO expert.

Amidon said she collected pieces for the chair from so-called “TEPCO beach,” located on the south shore of Point Isabel off Central Avenue near Costco in Richmond.  The beach is where TEPCO dumped its seconds and today still contains thousands of shards of TEPCO ware.  She also obtained some pieces from Genser-Maack, including a plate that is embedded in the sculpture, she said.

Although Amidon has used TEPCO pieces in some of her other tile mosaic works, this is the first to use TEPCO pieces exclusively, said Amidon, who also works as an RN at Kaiser Oakland.

“This is my first piece that's purely and entirely TEPCO,” she said. Amidon, who says she took up art seriously beginning in 1994, said the sculpture echoes a popular TEPCO coffee cup that was a milky tan color known at Sunglow.

She told Patch in an email that she would like to use a different name for the piece instead “TEPCO Chair,” which was used when the sculpture was presented to the museum located at 400 Nevin Ave.

Amidon now prefers “Tepco Coffeecup Loveseat,” which she said “better describes the sculpture.”

Art at a history museum?

Amidon said TEPCO is an important part of local history, not only because of its roots in El Cerrito but also because of its widespread use in many local businesses and institutions, including Trader Vic's and Doggie Diner. Closer to home, she said, is the use of TEPCO in the mess of the ship Red Oak Victory, the World War II Victory Ship that is being restored under the auspices of the Richmond Museum of History and the Richmond Museum Association.

According to the museum's web page on the ship, the Red Oak Victory is the only vessel built by Richmond's Kaiser Shipyards that is being restored. The shipyards were established by Henry J. Kaiser, whose name is best-known today for the Kaiser hospitals, where Amidon works and where she obtained medical care as a small child.

Amidon, whose work focuses on using materials found on beaches and the banks of waterways, said she had long been using ceramic pieces from TEPCO Beach before she knew of the TEPCO business. "I was using pieces for years without knowing what they were," she said.

She first learned about TEPCO when she saw an exhibit of TEPCO ware by Genser-Maack at the Richmond museum. Genser-Maack on TEPCO before a packed house at the El Cerrito Senior Center in June.