These years marked McIntosh's first exposure to many of the famous California painters at the time, including Millard Sheets, as well as influential early ceramicists such as Gertrud and Otto Natzler.

The next year, he, his brother, and ceramicist Albert Henry King put together a small gallery space on Sunset Strip called The Californians.

With the United States' involvement in World War II, however, these plans came to a halt as he was drafted into the army as a medic in Northern California.

[1] In 1948, McIntosh used the GI Bill to study ceramics in the MFA program through the Claremont Graduate School directed by Millard Sheets.

[2] During his time at CGU, McIntosh became friends with fellow student and ceramicist Rupert Deese, with whom he opened a studio on Foothill Boulevard in Claremont, California.

McIntosh and Deese worked together as business partners and friends for the next 50 years, first in the Foothill Boulevard space from 1950 to 1958, and then in a studio at Padua Hills until 2006.

In addition to his lasting relationship with Deese, McIntosh was also close with many other Claremont artists such as Jim Hueter, Karl Benjamin, and Sam Maloof.

Here he met Paul Soldner, John Mason, and Kenneth Price, who, with Voulkos, were translating the budding Abstract Expressionist movement into their work with clay.

In the first two decades of his career, McIntosh sold his work at various home-furnishing stores such as Bullocks Wilshire, Van Kepple Green in Beverly Hills, Kurt Wagner's in Redondo Beach and Abacus in Pasadena.

Although many of his contemporaries were known for creating the large emotional works associated with Abstract Expressionism, McIntosh focused on subtlety and deliberation through the modern, functional forms of vessels.

While the decoration of his early pieces have a regularity and rhythm, over time they gained dynamism as McIntosh explored line-work that expressed movement.

The placement of these steel walls create a mirrored surface that emphasize the appearance of the ceramic form being suspended in space, much like planets.