When I was a little girl, after my grandmother died, I inherited several bird figurines. At the time, I had no idea of their significance. The man I knew as my grandfather was her husband, Grandpa Maurice, not Brad Keeler, the man who fathered her children and died when my mother was only four. Had I known, I might have handled them with more care.

What happens when you give a child of seven small fragile things? They get broken, of course.

I kept them on my bookshelf next to my Little Golden Books and Dr. Seuss and other knickknacks but they occasionally got knocked over, especially the little yellow bird. If you look at the tail and the wings, you can see the seams from where I used Elmer’s Glue to reaffix the pieces. I haven’t had to repair it again since I was a kid, which speaks well of good old fashion glue!

The yellow bird was one of the few made after Brad Keeler’s death, under my grandmother’s name. The other bird is the one below. It’s managed to stay intact all these years despite my many moves, including coast to coast.

What’s with the book, you are wondering? I’ll tell you.

Also among my grandmother’s things were several books belonging to her late husband which my mom hung onto. At some point, she handed them off to me because I love books, and there they sat unopened on my bookshelves for a decade.

As an adult, I’ve become an avid collector of Brad Keeler ceramics, including his birds. There are two Birds of America books by Audubon in the stack, one from 1937 and another from 1944. They are about fourteen inches tall and ten or so inches wide.

One afternoon my husband and I were checking out a row of antique stores in San Dimas. We were down to the last one, and I was about to call it a bust when I spotted the oriole below.

Back home, it occurred to me to wonder—why now? I don’t know—but I did wonder—could Brad have been using these Audubon books as reference material for his birds? I decided to open the books and see if I could match the birds to the pictures. If so, it would give me a little insight into his process.

In many cases, yes!, there was a close enough match, but not all. It was fun to go through the books. In the newer copy, I made a discovery:

It is inscribed by Fred Kaye to Brad!

I’m so glad to still have these in my possession. The younger me clearly didn’t know what she had, but knew enough to not get rid of them.

A final note: See those scraps of paper in the lower left corner of that picture?

They were being used as bookmarks, presumably by Brad, and they fell out of the book as I flipped through the pages. I had no idea they were in there until they fell out.

I wish I knew what pages they had been marking!

Brad Keeler's Birds of America