The tales tiles tell

Gather round the fire, friends, and admire the works of Craftsman artisans of yesteryear and today

By Ann Jarmusch

Even in San Diego, where winter is a whisper of its true self, we long to sit by the fire with a good book or with family and friends gathered ’round. Many Craftsman bungalows and Spanish Revival beauties come equipped with decoratively tiled fireplaces, which offer psychological or actual warmth to living rooms, dining rooms and libraries.
Gustav Stickley, the early 20th century American Arts and Crafts movement leader and designer, published dozens of building plans for Craftsman homes and we’re hard-pressed to find one without a fireplace.
“The big, hospitable fireplace is almost a necessity, for the hearthstone is always the center of true home life, and the very spirit of home seems…(embodied in) a crackling, leaping fire of logs,” Stickley wrote in an essay called “The Craftsman Idea.”
The fireplaces of San Diego’s bungalows typically were clad in tiles handmade by Batchelder Tile Company of Pasadena or Claycraft Pottery of Los Angeles. These companies specialized in romantic pictorial tiles inspired by Southern California’s missions and mountains, land and sea creatures, succulents and trees. Batchelder also created rustic, Medieval-themed tiles, in tribute to a pre-industrial age when artisans and their guilds commanded respect.
These fireplace tiles, which can be identified through each company’s vintage catalogs, made striking centerpieces and symmetrical accents surrounding thousands of fireboxes in Southern California and beyond.  Both companies also made field tiles in mottled, earth tones, which typically fill in the area around the accent tiles. (The Batchelder name is better known today, and Claycraft Pottery fireplace tiles are often assumed to be Batchelder.)
Ernest Batchelder (1875-1957) started his tile company in 1909 and won a gold medal for design at the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. Claycraft Pottery opened in 1921 and survived the Great Depression, while Batchelder’s company did not. Still, Ernest Batchelder continued a smaller scale operation at home until the 1950s.
Today, the two chief tile artists keeping the flame alive in San Diego’s historic fireplaces are Laird Plumleigh, whose studios are in Leucadia, and Stephani Stevenson of Revival Tileworks, also in Leucadia. Both launched their businesses by restoring and reproducing Batchelder and Claycraft tiles for homes in North Park, Mission Hills and elsewhere. Both also ship their tiles across the country to homes they never get to see.
“I learned all about California tile,” said Stevenson, who moved here 11 years ago after earning a master of fine arts degree in ceramics from the University of Oregon, Eugene, and working in Montana. “I’m always grateful to Batchelder and Claycraft because they helped me get started.”
With her move to San Diego, Stevenson shifted from working as a ceramic sculptor to the craft of making relief and field tiles and architectural ceramics. She worked for Plumleigh, who established his studio in 1976, for a year or so before launching Revival Tileworks in 2000.
Stevenson reproduces or adapts historic tiles in the manner and palette of Batchelder and Claycraft. In addition and increasingly by commission, she creates original pictorial reliefs glazed in bright colors and sometimes dashed with humor. Her Website (revivaltileworks.com) is a virtual gallery of tile art and a primer on glazing techniques. It’s also the best way to contact her, since Stevenson may be moving to Arizona sometime next year.
Stevenson’s current “showroom” is in the front section of a huge former greenhouse. Sample tiles depict a romantic Claycraft-like rancho scene, a rabbit amid stylized vines, perky ravens and classic pine cones. Nearby, long tables hold projects in progress, such as a Craftsman fireplace, its tiles laid out in rows and destined for Seattle.
One of her more unusual requests came from a North Park homeowner who brought her a vintage Mexican blanket so she could adapt its hues and stripes for a kitchen counter. The wool blanket is neatly folded with bits of colored tile sprinkled on top.
Peter Jackson, director of the “Lord of the Rings” films, must have Googled “Batchelder tile reproductions” and found Stevenson because he contacted her out of the blue for some custom work for his home in New Zealand. Before he became a success, “he slept on a lot of couches in L.A. and stared at a lot of Batchelder tile,” she explained.
A few miles away, Plumleigh is in the process of reproducing a Batchelder fireplace for a client, but that’s rare anymore, because he’s known for his own aesthetic and designs. Over the years, he and his assistants have created glazes far richer in color and applied them in many more layers than was typical of Batchelder or Claycraft Pottery.
The Los Angeles native is in tune with Arts and Crafts values, such as simplicity, honesty of materials, a respect for craftsmanship and, he added, “an almost religious respect for nature.”
For years, Plumleigh sold many tiles depicting oak trees. Then, about three years ago, he created a towering, vertical Torrey Pine motif that resonates with San Diegans the way the Monterey cypress speaks to people in Northern California. Plumleigh’s valentine to the rare native tree caught fire with many customers, local and otherwise.
Another regional favorite, a narrow horizontal tile of Torrey Pines atop a bluff overlooking La Jolla Cove, is based on a photograph Plumleigh took while hiking in Torrey Pines State Reserve. Both designs are available in a variety of colors and glazing techniques, which homeowners, architects and designers can see and touch for themselves at his studio or explore online at www.lairdplumleigh.com.
Having started out as a painter, Plumleigh distinguishes his tiles through a painterly approach to applying color and glazes.  For impressionistic effects, he sprays on glaze as a fine mist.
With more than 35,000 decorative and field tiles and ceramic moldings at his studio compound, Plumleigh is ahead of the game. He will design a fireplace surround or customers are welcome to bring their fireplace measurements (his Website offers a guide) and design their own.
Customers make their way to the studio through succulent gardens studded with Plumleigh’s other creations: tall fountains, garden urns and massive Arts and Crafts-style lanterns. They pass through a room with sample compositions of fireplace tiles before undertaking their own projects.
The fun starts with selecting tiles from rows and rows of earthy or colorful inventory, and laying them out on a huge slanted board. Long shelves along two long walls display a dizzying range of possibilities in the Craftsman, Medieval and Hispano-Moresque styles. (Plumleigh created the latter for fountains in Balboa Park and restored damaged tile in Alcazar Garden.)
Sometimes he’ll offer the client a suggestion or two, other times he’ll leave the studio for a while to give someone who’s shy or uncertain some breathing room. “Even if they’re initially overwhelmed, they have an innate sense of what fits in their home and lifestyle,” said Plumleigh, a former college and high school art instructor. “They’re forced to make creative decisions, which is good.”
Upon finishing a fireplace design, one man told him, “This is one of the best things my wife and I have ever done together.”
The nesting instinct remains strong despite the recession, Plumleigh observed, noting that fireplaces make up 80 percent of his commissions.  “People seek a secure area in a time of turmoil – economically and in the whole world. I think there is a need for people to make their house a refuge.”