Watts debuts 70-tile Muresque mural at October Golden California Show

 

Eric Ramos to the rescue in risky Fresno salvage job

Highlighting this year’s Golden California Show slated for October 9th and 10th will be a 70-tile mural that dealer Eric Watt is still in the process of salvaging from the estate of the owner of Muresque Tile. He will be showcasing this phenomenal 7′ x 10 1/2′ Spanish Courtyard scene, along with several dozen tiles from the Fresno estate.

Major tile dig
“I have been digging around there for about a week,” reported Watt, owner of Caltiles.com, in early September. He hopes to have the showstopper out of the wall in time for the sixth annual show, but he will certainly have plenty of never-before-seen tiles from the estate. He enlisted master tile salvager, Eric Ramos, to help in the process of the massive extraction.
“It is either Claycraft or Muresque,” he said of the tile mural, adding that Muir was a big collector of tile, especially Claycraft, so it was not necessarily made by his own company. ” I won’t know for sure until I can see the back of one of the tiles.”
Watt is not certain what he will price the mural at yet, but suspects a likely buyer will be somebody who is custom building a large Spanish style home.
Watt will be featuring other tiles from the estate of Muir, who founded Muresque Tiles in Oakland in 1925. The factory was located at 1001 22nd Avenue. Muir was not always a California boy; he was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, where he apprenticed as a tile setter.
Watt’s selection at the show will include nearly a dozen individual tiles that belonged to the founder. He will also debut an original Muresque catalog from the 1930s, a couple of old boxes in which the tiles were shipped, prototype fireplace surrounds depicting the history of California (certainly appropriate for the Golden California Show, and large tiles hand signed “W. Muir.”
“These were probably prototype pieces,” said Watt.

 

Inspired by both Batchelder and Claycraft
“There will be all kinds of neat historical items,” he said. “The more I dig, the more I find.”
Muresque tiles, among the finest tiles produced in California, were inspired by both Batchelder and Claycraft tiles. Among the many tiles, trim shapes and accessories offered by Muresque, the company produced over 130 decorative tiles, most molded in high relief with a raised border and used as wall or mantel inserts. The subject matter was always romantic, depicting the majestic California landscape, scenes from nature, medieval imagery, and most notably, ships at sea.
In addition to Watts’ tiles, there will be more than 40 other dealers in the 11,000 square foot Glendale Civic Auditorium. Offerings will include California Rancho style and Arts & Crafts furniture, early California pottery, fine art, iron metalwork and lighting, American Indian and Old West, Mexicana, and even smaller specialties, such as Big Bear Lodge and High Sierra Cabin.
Los Amigos del Arte Popular will be holding a panel discussion of masks, “The Arts of the Mexican Mask,” on Saturday at 2:00 p.m. The lecture is free with paid show admission.

 

Associate producer, Ted Birbilis, made a last minute announcement of some additional dealers. Just joining the roster were Federico, Andrew Munana Collection, Caskey Lees, Stephen Johnson, Michael Tierney Fine Art, Rod Bartha Antique Interiors, Brian Kaiser, and Len Woods Indian Territory.
Show hours are Saturday from 10-6 and Sunday from 10-4. Tickets sales ($12 each) start at 9:15 a.m. on Saturday morning.
This is producer Ted Birbilis and Sandy Raulston’s first Golden California show since their new and wildly successful Antiques & Objects L.A. which was held in the same venue, in March.
For more information on the Golden California Show, contact Ted or Sandy at (626) 437-6275 or tednsandy@goldencaliforniashow.com, or Eric Berg at eric@goldencaliforniashow.com.

Drew more than 1,500 Native Wildflowers

Although he is best known for his Rookwood pottery designs, Albert Valentien also worked on paper as evidenced by a framed floral image in the space of Robert Sommers at the last Del Mar Show.”He was Mr. Arts & Crafts in San Diego and he had Valentien Pottery on 30th and University,” said Sommers.According to the specialist in Arts & Crafts and Mission items, Ellen Browning Scripps commissioned Valentien to document all of the wildflowers and flora of Southern California.”This is #8 mechanical study that’s in the book and was also shown at the Valentien exhibit in Cincinnati in 2000,” he said. ‘It’s just a great piece of San Diego history dated on the front and the back.” Valentien is best known for his pottery decoratings. By the age of 19, he was employed at Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, and he became the head decorator there, staying for 24 years. In 1900, he received the gold medal at the Paris Exposition for his work at Rookwood.His works on canvas and paper began much later

Lickver's Rookwood piece hits 100 years old

Carnival Glass dealer Gary Lickver offered a piece of 1910 Rookwood at the Bustamante Show that was about to jump in value.”In another month it will be 100 years old,” said Lickver, who hoped to get $2,500 for the vase covered in subtle trees framed by a glowing sunset.The Japanese artist

Raulston's $12,500 Art Nouveau piece

A rare 1905 Van Briggle vase in a never-before-seen shape will be the showstopping piece in their Los Angeles Pottery Show space.”This is the only one known to exist in that shape,” said Raulston, adding that it was listed in the early shape catalog.The organic Art Nouveau vase is crafted of a Garden of the Gods red clay covered in a thin glaze.It is priced at $12,500.Raulston is a dealer at the Pasadena Antique Center.The current owner of Van Briggle Pottery, Bertha Stevenson, will also be set up at the Los Angeles Pottery Show and is looking forward to seeing the unusual piece.

Marblehead starts trend continued at Los Angeles Pottery Show

In the tradition started by Marblehead pottery, the Los Angeles Pottery Show is fostering the connection between pottery and social welfare by donating proceeds from verbal appraisals to Homeboy Industries. This year, the Los Angeles Pottery Show is being held a couple of weeks earlier, on January 23rd and 24th, which is a real strategic advantage, since it won’t be conflicting with the ever popular Clock Show and the Vintage Fashion Expo.Los Angeles Pottery Show promoters Ken Stalcup and Dennis Warden along with David Rago and Suzanne Perrault will be raising money through verbal appraisals to get kids out of gangs. There are many projects taking place at the organization, and placing art on pottery is one of them; several stunning examples will be shown at the show.Marblehead Pottery started the tradition of social betterment through pottery when in 1904, Dr. Herbert J. Hall, a studio art pottery in Marblehead, Massachussetts, took the controversial step of using ceramic making and decorating as a rehabilitation and therapeutic aid to local sanitarium patients at Hall’s Devereux Mansion Sanitarium. He did this despite the vocal objections of so-called community leaders. Marblehead was not the only sanitarium to take up potting. Dr. Phillip King Brown at the Arequipa Sanitarium thought that patients should be given some sort of occupation. According to Sandy Raulston, one of the promoters of the Golden California Show, a lot of the potters were women, since a lot of the patients were women.”There were a lot of mad chamber maids from San Francisco,” he said. “They worked inside where it was cold, dark and damp so they tended to get it much worse than the men who worked outside.”The work that the patients provided would be sold and the profits would help pay for the care that they were given. Also, the work would give the patients something to do instead of resting, which he felt would bring about idleness. The first occupation that they attempted was basket weaving, but baskets failed to reap in enough profits. Dr. Brown heard about the success of pottery making at the Marblehead Sanitarium and decided to give it a try at Arequipa, and to call it a success was an understatement. At the Panama Pacific Exposition, Arequipa pottery had its own booth with three former patients showing how the pottery was made. A lot of credit should also be given to Frederick Hurten Rhead, a potter from Staffordshire, who decided to take the job of starting pottery making at Arequipa.Collectible art created by patients was not just restricted to the world of pottery. Prison art was a popular and productive way for inmates to spend their time, from caricatures on envelopes to cigarette wrappers folded into baby shoes.Vintage prison art is highly collectible. Tauni Brustin, co-promoter of the All-American Show, is a collector of prison art who also regularly attends the Los Angeles Pottery Show.The Los Angeles Pottery Show has become the biggest and the best of its kind. Back in the old days, there used to be the Pottery Show Calif, started by Al Nobel and continued briefly by Penelope, the Orange County Pottery Show in Buena Park presented by Bobby Murphy, and Steve Sanford’s Bay Area Pottery Show, which was held in San Jose.Although it is held in the expansive Pasadena Center now, when it started out, the Los Angeles Pottery Show occupied a much smaller venue

Bauer bob's jade green Indian bowl

Bauer Bob definitely earned his title at the Golden California Show. He offered several pieces of vintage Bauer, including an Indian Bowl covered in a jade green glaze. The 1928-29 bowl powwowed for $650.When not selling at a show, Bauer Bob’s merchandise can be found at Long Beach Antique Mall and Chapman Antique Mall in Orange.The story of Bauer didn’t begin in California, but rather in Paducah, Kentucky where J. Andy Bauer ran a ceramics factory which manufactured stoneware crocks, jugs, whiskey jugs, and pitchers. During the early years, the factory evolved to produce an ever more decorative variety of kitchenware and ceramics for the home, such as redware versions of the crocks, jugs, and pitchers produced earlier, but also decorative vases, a popular line of flower pots, milk jugs, mixing bowls and utilitarian pieces common in American homes. Bauer’s work was sold mostly in the Midwest from his base in Kentucky, for cost effective transcontinental distribution networks that were still in their infancy.Sensing the limitations of this geographic dependency and thinking the California climate would be beneficial to his asthma, Andy Bauer opened a second manufacturing facility in Los Angeles in 1909.This was an area similar to the Zanesville area of Ohio, where there were groupings of talented potters and designers to draw upon. Los Angeles had the benefit of being the western terminus of the transcontinental rail lines, but it also offered inspiration in the emerging American Arts & Crafts movement. Bauer produced designs reflecting this new design aesthetic, and in 1916 they introduced a new line of hand thrown art pottery mostly in a matte green glaze reminiscent of Grueby ceramics. As California grew, so did Bauer pottery, which sold their wares both at retail as well as wholesale to garden centers and nurseries. After Andy Bauer died and was succeeded by Louis Ipsen, Ipsen designed the Bauer Ringware line, incorporating concentric circles, or “rings”, into a form that could be mass produced and sold at modest prices. Ringware was sold in a vibrant rainbow of colors and contrasted markedly from primarily white dinnerware common during the period and reminiscent of colorful Fiestaware which followed 7 years later and was designed by Frederick H. Rhead for the Homer Laughlin Company. Bauer pioneered innovations in glazing and ceramics manufacturing which they used to create the vibrant colors of Ringware, capitalizing on the talents of engineer Victor Houser who joined the firm in 1928 and revolutionized Bauer manufacturing techniques. They produced hundreds of pieces to complement any table setting including plates and bowls of various sizes, cookie jars, oil jars, pitchers, teapots, mixing bowls, and table accessories. Many talented artists and designers created lines for Bauer over the years, with the most famous lines in addition to Ringware being Russel Wright, Fred Johnson, Speckleware, Monterey, Matt Carlton, Tracy Irwin, Gloss Pastel, Atlanta, Garden Ware, and Cal Art.

Wells' Silverlake shop inspires Smith to start Santa Monica Tile Show

Scott Wells is one of the true pioneers in the vintage tile world and as far as quantity and quality, he has remained on top for more than two decades.In fact, it was his Silver Lake shop that set the stage for the first Southern California antique show dedicated to tiles. When California Heritage Museum director Tobi Smith saw all the brightly-colored tiles, many from the 1920s tile renaissance in Los Angeles, her jaw dropped.”She (Tobi Smith) got the idea for the Santa Monica tile show from coming into my store,” said Wells. “She said, ‘wow, we can do a show on tiles.’”Wells agreed with her and had already tried his hand at a pottery and tile show with Marc Tisdale. They held a few at the Elks Lodge in Pasadena.However, it was the inaugural tile show held at the California Heritage Museum that served as a springboard for the tile world.”The Santa Monica Tile Show ended up being the most successful show she ever held at the museum,” said Wells. Eminating from that show were two books that Wells helped to compile, and there has been a Santa Monica Tile Show every year since that first groundbreaking one.Further spreading information on this growing genre was Norman Karlson’s comprehensive and photo-intense hardcover books on the subject, which documented the major tile makers from A to Z. ”It was a series of four books,” recalled Wells. “Those raised tile collecting to another level.”When Wells started buying tiles in the early 1990s there wasn’t much of a market. However, he was able to find them in sizable quantities and inexpensively. He admired their beauty and was convinced that they would catch on with vintage home decorators. At the time, there were no books on the subject, she he set the prices and developed a market.”A lot of people get into this and they get addicted and start collecting them like stamps,” said Wells. For some its the colors and the designs, and for others, it’s the way the glazes feels on their fingertips.Either they mount them in walls which is what they are for or they set them on tables,” said Wells. There is plenty to choose from. According to Wells, collectors can get copies of original company catalogs and try to track down examples of specific tiles. There were more than 100 Los Angeles area tile companies during the 1920s heyday, including Batchelder, Claycraft and Malibu.”When your eyes are opened to the beauty of tiles, you will see them everywhere in L.A.

Rare Batchelder bathroom hooks at Golden California Show

A recently uncovered group of high glazed Malibu tiles and rare Batchelder bathroom towel hooks dazzled in the space of Jose Vera at the Golden California Show.Vera is in a better position to speak authoritatively about the ceramics and wood that he sells because of his vast and indepth knowledge of the cultural issue surrounding his merchandise.In his double booth he offered a wide range of items from Navajo blankets and plein air paintings to massive oil jars and garden urns. For those who didn’t make it to the show, Vera has a 4,000 square foot gallery in Eagle Rock filled with Mexican, Chicano, Latin American, European and American Art, as well as furniture, tiles, pottery and architectural pieces from the Mission, Spanish Revival, Art Deco and Arts & Crafts periods. Jose Vera Fine Art & Antiques is located at 2012 Colorado Blvd. in Los Angeles. Call (323) 258-5050 for more information.

Ordeal is finally over thanks to tile dealer

After two years of trying to regain ownership over his website, which was being held hostage by unscrupulous internet technicians in India, Roy Shabla has finally regained complete control over Blesstheworld.com.After being abandoned by his webmistress and friend of nine years, Shabla and tile dealer and computer whiz, Karen Guido staged a coup over the domain name on June 23rd. The takeover was successful and Shabla has regained control over the website that was rightfully his and his website now pops up on the first page of hits.His website, which is now simpler and easier to navigate, focuses on spiritual healing through meditation and feng shui. It offers spiritual books and newsletters, as well as bottled holistic remedies, such as flower and gemstone essences for all sorts of physical and mental maladies.Although he is a regular dealer at the Los Angeles Pottery Show and the Arts & Crafts Show in San Francisco, Shabla makes his living by teaching meditation and the art of feng shui.Many people have heard of feng shui but consider it a pseudoscience that is a couple of notches below astrology. However, it is a science as exacting as thermodynamics.If your feng shui is off by a single millimeter, it can lead to divorce. Feng Shui is an ancient science which manipulates the inherent subtle energy of buildings. Feng shui theorizes that features of architecture (form and placement) affect the inhabitants of that building in real ways such as financial and romantic. The term literally translates as “wind-water” in English. Traditional feng shui always requires an extremely accurate Chinese compass, or luo pan, in order to determine the directions in finding any auspicious sector in a desired location. Until the invention of the magnetic compass in China during the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.), feng shui relied on astronomy to find correlations between humans and the universe.Modern feng shui is practiced by many people who believe it is important and helpful in living a prosperous and healthy life either avoiding or blocking negative energies that might otherwise have bad effects. Many of the higher-level forms of feng shui are not so easily practiced without either connections, or a certain amount of wealth because the hiring of an expert, the great altering of architecture or design, and the moving from place to place that is sometimes necessary requires a lot of money. Because of this, some people of the lower classes lose faith in feng shu, saying it is only a game for the wealthy. Others, however, practice less expensive forms of feng shui, including hanging special mirrors, forks or woks in doorways to deflect negative energy.Even today, feng shui is so important to some people that they use it for healing purposes, separate from western medical practices, in addition to using it to guide their businesses and create a peaceful atmosphere in their homes. In 2005, even Disney acknowledged feng shui as an important part of Chinese culture by shifting the main gate to Hong Kong Disneyland by twelve degrees in their building plans.

kat von d quite a spectacle

“L.A. Ink” star and tattooist Kat Von D made quite an impression at the June Rose Bowl. When she was shopping, she found a fan in pottery dealer Tim Meikle, who collects both frog items and tattoos.Meikle is not shy about showing off his ink. He has bright green bamboo shoots inked up and down his legs, but this is nothing compared to Kat Von D who is virtually covered in tattoos from head to toe.Kat owns a tattoo shop in Los Angeles and has her own television show, “L.A. Ink” which airs on TLC. Each week the show tells the story of a new person being tattooed, as well as following the exploits and capturing the drama of Kat and the other three tattoo artists. The new season begins on July 7th.