Ceramic company creates feats of clay in bright colors

Broad and sturdy banana leaves, prolific ti leaves, idyllic bird of paradise plants and charming honu, or turtles, all can be seen in practical and artful ceramic form at Tropical Clay — if you know how to find them.

The company showroom is a tad out of the way, on Kapaa Quarry Place in Kailua, just off “dump road,” as Windward kama­aina know it.

Individual shoppers perusing the Tropical Clay website will find choices from a small, fish-shaped dish for $12 all the way up to a hand-carved Heliconia lamp at $525.

The everything-in-between includes small bowl sets in anthurium, plumeria and hibiscus shapes, mugs, an Asian-inspired line including ramen bowls, banana- and palm-leaf patterned platters, plates, bathroom accessories, trivets and Hawaii-themed Kalikimaka ornaments, among many other items.

The small business was started in 1980 by Steve Nadalin, “and I came over in ’83,” said Mario Mortara, now the owner.

He and Nadalin were buddies at California State University at Long Beach who each received a degree in ceramics, “although he started as a psychology major and I started as a marine biology major,” Mortara chuckled.

The two pumped out hand-turned and hand-built ceramic ware and art pieces for craft fairs and small gallery-type shops, “and that was OK back in the 80s, we did pretty well with that,” he said.

“For a brief period through the ’90s, we were importing products from China … but it became distasteful to me,” so the operation returned to being 100 percent made in Hawaii.

Sometime in the mid- to late 1990s, Nadalin’s wife’s salon, Marsha Nadalin Salon and Spa in Kahala Mall, “was just doing so well he could not afford to stay at Tropical Clay, so I took over,” Mortara said.

From the craft fair and gallery circuit, Tropical Clay expanded its reach into retail, with the line sold at small stores around the islands and in Liberty House and, later, Macy’s.

“It seems retail is finally starting to pick up a little bit; the galleries are starting to order more,” he said.

Through the years the business grew with the addition of wholesale work.

While Mortara does have an independent sales representative that markets his business, he also drums up quite a bit of the company’s business himself.

He’ll get his portfolio of pictures of his work and pack up some smaller items “and haul them in there to talk to them about it,” making suggestions as to what pieces might sell well from the store or work well in the restaurant, as well as offering to make a prototype of something a business owner thinks they might need, he said.

The company has created planters for Koolau Farmers nursery stores, dinnerware for restaurants including Mama’s Fish House on Maui and Gyo­taku Japa­nese restaurants on Oahu, as well as what he called “amenity” products for the hospitality industry, such as the Four Seasons Resorts on Lanai and Lawai Beach Resort on Kauai.

“Amenity stuff for in the rooms, or common areas, like planters, water carafes, things like that,” Mortara explained.

The company does custom lamps and custom dinner ware for large wholesale clients such as hotels, restaurants and companies ordering say, 300 custom coffee mugs, but also has individual clients who place custom orders. A wholesale order for 200 dinner plates, for instance, can take three weeks to a month to finish, “with my backlog,” he said.

He believes Tropical Clay is best known for its colors — 70 colors are used for its lines of ceramics.

Custom orders also can be small, such as those he’s taken for commemorative wedding plates, birth announcement plates or farewell plates, like those he has made for groups of Navy wives clubs when a member’s spouse gets permanent-change-of-station orders.

Ceramic pieces made at Tropical Clay are hand-thrown on a potter’s wheel, hand-built, or cast in molds.

Usually Mortara and his wife, Hozumi, crank out the ceramics themselves, but get help from recently hired veteran Christopher Richmond two days a week.