Los angeles Home for Sale:    6579 Pickwick St   1.6 acre vintage 1939 villa estate

" The house is a museum.
This is magnificent and rare to see so many of them in a residence... It's quite special...."
August 11, 2008  Dr. Robert Winter-California's leading architectural historian and author of "Batchelder Tilemaker" THE Batchelder expert.

From President of Tile Heritage

"Your Batchelder tile installations are significant. Batchelder tiles were commonly used in Southern California homes from the early 1910s through the 1930s primarily on fireplace mantels. What's unusual in this home are the polychrome tiles on the stair risers, a unique combination of pattern and color with a special aesthetic appeal. There is a definite sense of both warmth and welcome to these installations."

                                               August 2008-Joseph A. Taylor


"For Tile Preservation, Research and Information: Go to Tile Heritage Foundation  website:
http://www.tileheritage.org/TileHeritage-home.html

Batchelders are highly sought after and sold in auctions and antique tile stores for over hundreds and thousands of dollars. The Batchelder tilesare very well known back from the early 1910's thru1932 as the highest quality decorative tiles.
Today, they are considered as collectibles and treasured by art aficionados
 Batchelders tiles are sold  in auction houses such as the Rago auction house on the East Coast and can also be found in antique stores.

CALIFORNIA VINTAGE BLOG PAGE
Click here to read more on California's award winning architectural historian, Dr. Robert Winter's morning visit to Pickwick Estate.
                                 

Dr. Winter's morning visit August 11th

<Photo above: >Dr. Winter in front of Entry stair risers. Over 124 Polychrome Batchelder tiles. 

Pickwick Estate features over 800 Batchelder tiles on the interior and exterior.
It is a veritable museum of
Batchelder tiles.
They are embedded in the walls including front entry stair risers, posts, bench, living stair risers, window sills, fountains and also as grill tiles in the bathroom and outdoor seating area.

<Photo Below:> Dr. Winter, Sylvain Copon sitting outside on the Batchelder bench.

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Ernest Batchelder and Dr. Robert Winter

Robert Winter  Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia .Robert Winter (born 1924) is one of California's leading architectural historians. He is the Arthur G. Coons Professor of the History of Ideas, Emeritus, at Occidental College, Los Angeles. He is particularly known for his contributions to the history of the California branch of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Winter was born in Indianapolis. He received his undergraduate degree (A.B.) from Dartmouth College and his Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Early in his career he taught at Dartmouth, at Bowdoin, and at the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined the faculty at Occidental in 1963 and retired in 1994.

Winter lives in Pasadena in the Batchelder House that formerly belonged to tilemaker Ernest Batchelder.

Winter is the author of numerous books including The California Bungalow (1980) and American Bungalow Style (1996). With David Gebhard he co-authored guides to architecture in northern and southern California.

In 2007 Winter was made a Fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Ernest A. Batchelder (1875~1957) was one of the strongest design personalities in American art-tile production. Born in New Hampshire and educated in Massachusetts, he also trained at the Birmingham School of Arts and Crafts in Britain. He became associated with various American crafts schools, eventually setting up his own school of arts and crafts in Pasadena, California, in 1909. Although he was a writer and potter, he is best known as a tile designer, one very much influenced by the Gothic Revival and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Among his distinctive cast-ceramic tiles were images of medievalized lions, Art Nouveau peacocks, leaping hares and deer, and Japoniste trees and landscapes. Although very much akin in spirit and subject matter to the painted tiles of William De Morgan, the relief tiles of Batchelder are very much American, with their strong, moulded-relief designs. By 1930, the fashion for the art tile in the United States had diminished to the point where such tiles were regarded as merely utilitarian objects. The Depression forced many commercial firms to close, with art potters turning to university teaching to ensure their financial survival. Indeed, some American tile-producing potteries are still open -- and studio potters still create lovely tiles -- but there is nothing like the popular demand and consequent mass- production that existed in the six decades encompassing 1870 and 1930. However, the significance of American tiles in the history of tile-making has been recognized and interest in them has grown considerably in the last decade, as several museum exhibitions and commercial publications have shown.