The virtual village where Arts & Crafts lovers dwell got a little cozier at the dawn of this decade, and you’re invited to be part of it. That’s because Bruce Johnson – Arts & Crafts expert, author, craftsman and founder of the nation’s largest Arts & Crafts gathering — has launched a vibrant, user-friendly Website (artsandcraftscollector.com). It was born on Jan. 1.
“It was an exciting New Year’s Eve,” the energetic Johnson said happily during a recent phone interview. As he spoke, he was preparing for the annual Arts & Crafts Conference (arts-craftsconference.com) and antiques show, which he directs, to be held Feb. 19-21 at the historic Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C.
The New York Times has called the conference “the most important weekend of the year for Arts & Crafts collectors.” Educational presentations on furniture maker Leopold Stickley (emerging from his brother Gustav’s shadow), potter George Ohr, secrets of art pottery glazes and portraits of the Arts & Crafts home and garden are among this year’s scheduled highlights.
Johnson, a recipient of the “Als ik kan” award from the Gustav Stickley Craftsman Farms Foundation in 1999, expects 2,000 to 3,000 people to attend this year’s conference and show.
When he founded the Arts & Crafts Conference in 1988, Johnson writes, he had “just one person in mind: “the typical Arts & Crafts collector.” Now, 22 years later, he’s extended his target into cyberspace, with a Website and directory named accordingly. The handsomely designed site is free, an open forum and your 24/7 stop for all things Arts & Crafts.
In addition to components you might expect (events calendar, directory of dealers, craftspeople and services), the site is anchored by news articles and columns such as “Collectors’ Guide” and “Around the House,” which kicked off with tips on keeping a finish on your front door .
“Everything for Your Arts and Crafts Life” is the site’s subtitle, a telling reflection of the founder’s devotion to the movement as a philosophy, not a style.
Initial response to artsandcraftscollector.com has been positive among collectors, businesses and institutions, Johnson said, although the site was so new at the time of this interview that he hadn’t checked how many hits it had gotten. “In the first week, we went from being national to international,” he noted, citing a listing for Titus Omega from London dealer John Featherstone-Harvey.
San Diego’s Save Our Heritage Organisation preservation group offered up the first historic museum listing, which advertises the 1905 Marston House & Gardens in Balboa Park.
“This Website is just the thing for Arts & Crafts aficionados. Bruce Johnson has pulled together many facets of collecting and myriad resources, as per his usual style genius,” said Alana Coons, SOHO’s events and education director. “While it is brand new, you can see its massive potential.”
Johnson’s “genius” partly lies in anticipating and fulfilling the public’s hunger for expert knowledge and practical information on collections and the homes that hold them. Skilled in woodworking and antiques restoration, Johnson has written numerous books on collecting, furniture and refinishing, the latest being “Grove Park Inn Arts and Crafts Furniture” (2009, $35). A former high school teacher, he has toured the country giving lectures and appeared on PBS, HGTV, the Discovery Channel and the DIY cable network, where he has hosted such shows as “Do It Yourself Woodworking.”
This respected and charismatic expert lives with his family outside of Asheville in what he calls “a 1973 Arts & Crafts ranch house.” It’s remodeled with Arts & Crafts interiors, suitable for his vintage collections, but remains a ranch (complete with horses) on the exterior. And Johnson’s shingle is still out for his Knock on Wood Antique Repair and Restoration business.
Several Websites for Arts & Crafts magazines, societies and dealers already exist for information sharing and promotion, so why did Johnson think there is need for one more?
“What I felt each was lacking is up-to-the-minute news,” Johnson said. He highly regards magazines such as Style 1900 and American Bungalow, and has contributed to both (he answers readers’ questions in Style 1900’s “Collectors’ Counsel” column), but they lag behind the news by three to four months, he said. Timely reports on auction results, exhibitions, books and collections — “that’s what’s going to keep me interested,” he said. “There’s no shortage of news.”
“I also wanted to create an independent news source,” Johnson added, drawing on his journalism background. “What I didn’t want to create is a shallow attempt to lure in advertising.”
While the Arts & Crafts Collector site is dependent on advertising to a degree, Johnson and his team purposely kept the rates low, at least for an introductory period. A collector wanting to sell a piece of furniture or art pottery can run a classified ad for 30 days for a sliding fee of $10 to $25, depending on the price of the item. Display ads that appear for a month cost $98.
The more time you spend on the site, the more topics and helpful guides you discover. “Tips for Smart Buying” appears when you click on “Wanted to Buy.” A reference “library” and encyclopedic directory of shopmarks by furniture makers, potteries and others are being compiled, with the help of readers. And there’s advice on setting a price if you want to sell an object. Once the site has more entries, Johnson said they’ll add a “search” function, which will make it even faster and easier to use.
Johnson spent five months studying Websites to come up with this format, which relies on handsome color photographs, ads and graphics to catch the eye. Blue Ridge Solutions designed and implemented the site.
The goal is to build the Website so it becomes indispensible to anyone interested in the Arts & Crafts movement.
“I grew up in a small town in Illinois that lost its weekly newspaper,” Johnson said. “A town without a newspaper quickly deteriorates. My hope is that this site functions as a community newspaper, with news, features, classifieds.”
And there’s another essential ingredient.
“The only way artsandcraftscollector.com will succeed,” Johnson added, “is if we have a lot of  (online) activity, so let’s get everybody involved.”
Ann Jarmusch writes about art, design and historic preservation for local and national publications. She can be reached at ajarmusch@gmail.com

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.”

A unique three gable design is featured in this Orange Heights Historic District home.

Tour goers come away with design inspirations for future projects

By Kris Grant

You might call it the mother lode of design ideas for aficionados of everything Craftsman.
Pasadena is one of the, if not the, showplaces for Craftsman design in the United States, the location where architects William and Henry Greene set up shop, where Ernest Batchelder began designing unique tiles that found themselves onto fireplaces and fountains, and where preservationists today have come together to stage the largest and most comprehensive celebration of the Craftsman movement in the Western United States.
There were walking tours, seminars and three stories of vendors at Pasadena’s Masonic Temple, tempting attendees with antique Stickley pieces, Batchelder tile reproductions and Arts & Crafts inspired greeting cards.  There were lamps and pillows and curtains and hardware and rugs and plein aire paintings.  And then there was “the tour.”
The signature event of the Pasadena Heritage weekend held Oct. 17 and 18 and now in its 18th year is the Craftsman house tour, a drive-yourself tour to five homes that have been fully restored, furnished and decorated in the Craftsman style.
Here are highlights of four of the five homes. (Next year, I’ll be sure to step across the threshold of the first home promptly at 9 a.m. to allow enough time in the day to take in every home!)

Goodbye aluminum; welcome home, wood
Six years ago on Christmas Eve, Lisa Brault closed escrow on her 1911 home on Casa Grande. The home was built by Foss Design and Building Co., with Harry Banfield serving as the chief architect. Banfield put his own distinct touches into the home, most notably the “railroad” patterns in the windows, built-in cabinetry, large wide elephantine entry columns and the scoring of the steps up from the sidewalk. The home had gone through several renovations including the installation of aluminum siding.
“It didn’t really look that bad,” said Brault, “but if you were to knock up against it, it would sound like you had bumped into a car, kind of ‘ting-y.’ We really wanted to return it to its original shingles.”
Docent Barbara Schneider explained that the home had gone through many owners over the years and that one of them replaced the “creaky wood windows” with “smoothly operating weatherproof windows that last forever.”
“Tragically, they do,” chimed in one tour guest.
Schneider has been leading Pasadena Heritage tours for 27 years and says it’s like having a historic home of her own, “but without the blood sweat and tears.”
“Any of you have a historic home you’re in the process of renovating?” she asks the group.  “I usually have at least one hard-working masochist per group.”
The Braults also replaced 23 aluminum windows with Craftsman wood windows, including one with the railroad pattern in the upstairs window. Lisa Brault had been assured by experts that when the aluminum siding was removed, the underlying shingles would be in unusable shape – “baked and disintegrated” is the condition she expected.  However, three out the four sides were in near perfect condition, so only the front needed to be reshingled.
The home features a Batchelder fireplace, two original Stickley rockers, and matching china cabinets, again sporting the railroad wood motif, that flank a long window seat in Brault’s favorite room of the house, the dining room. “The Craftsman architects thought of everything,” said the dining room docent. There was no air conditioning in those days, but the cross ventilation from the French doors and front windows kept the room cool.
The kitchen features a 1943 Wedgewood double-burning oven, and marmoleum flooring, a natural linoleum floor tile made with all natural ingredients of linseed oil, cork, limestone, tree rosin and natural minerals, explained the kitchen docent.  “The color goes all through the flooring, so that if it is scratched, it can be buffed out and the color remains.” It’s also softer than a tile floor. The kitchen renovation also features a farmhouse-style sink, big enough for large pans.
An L-shaped countertop was designed in two heights:  one a few inches lower that allowed for lower shelves above and easy lifting of serving pieces.  It also allowed the two sides to not require dovetailing.

Stucco on a Craftsman home?
This year’s homes included a Grable & Austin-designed 1910 Craftsman in Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco historic neighborhood that featured the “innovation” of the day: dash-coat stucco, which was “flicked” onto the home by paint brush. Grable & Austin, a design/build firm, catered to an affluent audience and their median construction price one hundred years ago was $7,500. Their homes infused a Prairie-style influence with strong longitudinal lines and oversized beams, giving the house a sense of grandeur. This home received a 2009 City and State Preservation award.  Inside the home features the original picture rails in the living rooms and a collection of Kathleen West prints and an original.
In 1918 the home was expanded with the addition of a sunroom, a downstairs sun porch and an upstairs sleeping porch. The current owners removed 16 layers of paint to bring the wood back to its original luster.
Upstairs, docent Robert Bilheimer pointed out the birds-eye cherry wood flooring, which has been sanded and refinished as much as it can ever be. As tour goers stepped across a creaky board or two, Bilheimer said, “They’ve earned their squeaks.”
The home’s basement was enlarged, by lowering the floor eight inches. In this downstairs area that now functions as a warm and inviting guest quarters, a bedroom and full bath were added and the main room features deep cherry wood ceilings and paneling and a floor-to-ceiling flagstone fireplace. A retaining wall was put to good use as the base of a window seat in the living room.
A triple dormer home and a triple-digit lifespan
In Orange Heights, a 1909 bungalow sold for $2,264, an average cost for that year. No architect of record was associated with the property and a tour guide noted that plans were probably borrowed from another property in the vicinity. The home was commissioned by George Frank Thompson, the original subdivider of the Orange Heights Tract. This was the last house, and one of the largest, built in Pasadena by the architect W. D. Peckham. The first residents of the house were John William and Katherine Munroe. Mr. Munroe owned Munroe Hardware in Pasadena and established Munroe Motors, one of the first automobile dealerships in the city. In 1920, the home was sold William and Katherine Rempel. William was 20 years old at the time and lived there for 82 years until his death at the age of 102.
Perhaps because of its pedigree of just two owners before its present owner, the home is loaded with original features – all the wood had been painted white and was painstakingly renovated. Box beam ceiling surrounds remain in the living room and adjoining sitting room; the dining room includes all the original beams intact. The home contains a Batchelder fireplace and an Arroyo stone fireplace. Many of the 100 year old windows still contain the original rolled glass panes. Quarter stone oak floors are original, as is an extra-wide window seat.

A modest bungalow
A beautiful yet modest bungalow on Elizabeth Street in the Historic Highlands neighborhood, also won a 2009 City and State Historic Preservation Award for a property that had gone through a long list of owners and had been used most recently as a rental property.
It was purchased in 2001 by newlyweds Anthony Molinaro and Bridged Fennell, who received a call from their realtor while on their honeymoon in Ireland.  Luckily, the home was still on the market when they returned to the states and they moved in a few months later. Anthony then updated his woodworking skills from his middle school days by enrolling in the “Woodworkers Place” classes at Cerritos College. He then put those skills to work, refinishing woodwork in the living room and dining room and constructing the home’s dining room table and a rocker. The kitchen and bath areas were completely renovated under the direction of Lisa Henderson, AIA or Harvest Architecture. The homeowners shared a list of 12 contractors and subs who worked on the project, many of whom were on hand to share design ideas.
In the front yard, one side contains a small vegetable garden and the other, a labyrinth of Arroyo stone, both features replacing a thirsty grass lawn.  Outside decking in the back and around the sides invites indoor/outdoor living
Yes, children do live in Craftsman homes today as they did yesterday! And it’s a sure bet that the kids who play in the back yard swing set here are sure to derive as much pleasure as those who might have swung on similar sets nearly a century ago. (And inside, they’ll probably enjoy swinging on Dad’s rocker, too.)

Wander around Spanish Village’s art displays in Balboa Park and eventually you’ll find sparkling Studio 25. It’s the cheerful, colorful home of the Art Glass Guild, where natural light pours into skylights to illuminate the gleaming works of 35 members.
Energy flows here. Color and curves entrance the eye.
“I’ve always found glass to be really seductive. It’s so beautiful and it can be so many things,” said Gail Pulkrabek, guild chairman for 11 years. “It flows. There’s movement to it when it’s molten and you’re manipulating it. Even when it cools, you can see the motion.”
Still more glittering glass is on display Oct. 31-Nov. 15 in “Waves of Glass,” the 28th annual juried show of the guild’s larger sister organization, the Art Glass Association of Southern California. The exhibition, which includes functional, wearable and decorative works in a variety of techniques, occupies Spanish Village’s Studio 21.
No wonder glassmaking is a mesmerizing art form. Its natural origins are mysterious: Lightning? Camp fire leavings? Volcanic eruption? Probably all of the above. People stumbled onto glassmaking around 3,000 B.C., during the Bronze Age. At the beginning of the Roman Empire, glass vessels were considered luxuries, then came into widespread use. By the Middle Ages, lead “strings” made it possible to affix glass pieces to window openings and Venetian glassblowers were threatened with death if they revealed trade secrets. In the Space Age, NASA contributed the science behind dichroic glass, coveted for its otherworldly sparkle.
“Every generation adds to the path,” said Pulkrabek. “I think (the invention of the coating that makes dichroic glass) really revived the public’s interest in glass. It’s just so pretty.”
Pulkrabek, who is also president of the Art Glass Association, recalls being entranced at age 4 by the amazing transformations occurring in glass furnaces she visited with her father. While the molding process she witnessed then seemed magical, she now knows that when glass meets fire exact science is imperative.
“I liken it to cake batter,” she said, referring to varying rates of expansion and specific effects of heating and cooling glass. “You don’t mix carrot cake and pound cake ingredients and expect them to bake under the same conditions.”
A “magical dance of selectively heating and cooling the glass” is how Lea de Wit describes her artistic life in front of a furnace blazing heat at 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit. “The experience of working with a medium that can be molten in one state and breakable in another is fascinating,” she writes on her Web site: www.luckystripe.com.
She’s interested in the repetition of patterns in nature and the play of light on surfaces, especially water. A seven-year-old came up with the name “Dragon Scale” for one of de Wit’s  mottled patterns in glass. Pieces in the Dragon Scale series have a watery look (or is it cellular?) and hint at the way “light dances across the bottom” of shallow water along the coastline. In some of her vessels, ribbons of color seem to float to the top, like sea grasses.
De Wit, who studied with Italian glass masters in Italy and others in this country at the Corning Museum of Glass Studio and Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts, works with homeowners, interior designers and architects on custom pieces. She’s also known for imaginative sculptural installations in commercial settings, including a cake display that moved. This month she’s installing glass rondelles in 24 luminous niches at a corporate headquarters in Temecula.
Ivan Adaniya, who favors classical shapes for his vases, has been blowing glass since 1985 when he was a student at the University of Hawaii. He continued his studies at Palomar College, a regional center for glassmaking. Using tongs, he has coaxed molten glass into the shape of a starfish more than 2,000 times and in a rainbow of colors. He also creates life-size birds and flowers, both simplified to their essential shapes and shot with color.
At the Glass Art Guild’s Patio Sale in October, Adaniya’s standouts were a lone iridescent vase, a small beauty with the sheen of a pearl, and one stunning glass pumpkin. Unlike most other pumpkins offered at the sale, this one was opaque and hauntingly black. Its glass stem curled as naturally as can be into the air. “A glass form needs life,” he explained. “When something is reaching up into the sky, you feel that energy.”
Stained-glass artist Gary Mercurio contains the energy and flow of his pictorial and geometric panels and windows within the confines of lead canes, but that doesn’t mean he’s restricted. His favorite period, in fact, is the curvaceous Art Nouveau.
P.J. Horn, who made stained-glass windows for an entire Craftsman bungalow in North Park, showed her 30-year mastery of stained-glass technique in a round medallion featuring a Celtic knot and a weathervane with a stained-glass hummingbird and flower.
Another artist who sometimes looks to the past for inspiration is Patricia G. Yockey (www.yockeyglass.com), a veteran glassblower for 15 years. Among other things, she makes hanging vases in a shape reminiscent of ancient amphoras.  These large vessels have a narrow neck, two flat sides and a pair of handles. “Most people buy them to use as a flask,” she said, although they looked handsome in the garden setting where Yockey had hung several from shepherd’s crooks. If asked, she’ll provide the metal crook and maybe a custom stopper, too.
Guild members aim to please. They demonstrate their craft (minus the fiery furnace for safety reasons) and teach classes at Studio 25. They keep their gallery prices low and offer white gift boxes in exacting sizes. And once a year, each one donates a piece of his or her work to benefit another nonprofit organization.
“More than any other community of artists that I know of glass artists really want to share their passion,” said Pulkrabek.
De Wit, for one, hopes viewers are “drawn into” her swirling “Dragon Scale” work and want “to look at it, touch it, own it, look at it every day… I’m doing something that’s making people’s lives better in a small way.  I’m making a connection with other people.”

***
“Waves of Glass,” Oct. 31-Nov. 15, Spanish Village Art Center Studio 21, 1770 Village Place (off Park Blvd.), Balboa Park. Open daily 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Free. Artists reception Nov. 6, 6  to 9 p.m.  Ongoing Art Glass Guild exhibition and sales gallery in Studio 25. For more information, call (619) 702-8006 or visit www.agasc.org.

‘Granada House’ by Marjorie Taylor

“All art-loving people love nature first.”
— Charles Sumner Greene, Arts and Crafts architect

Story by Ann Jarmusch

Plein air paintings have always been at home in Arts and Crafts bungalows, where domesticity and reverence for nature are as intertwined as a William Morris textile design. Whether of the same vintage as the bungalow where they hang or finished just last week, plein air paintings continue to captivate us because they vividly recall familiar or exotic places.
The term “en plein air” — French for “in the open air” — refers to painting a picture outdoors in one session with the goal of recording the light, color and mood of a particular scene at a specific hour. The French Impressionists were among the first plein air painters; they took advantage of newly available paint in tubes and other portable supplies.
California light is surely as famous and alluring to artists and art lovers as that of the French Riviera or Tuscan countryside. La Jolla and Laguna Beach, for example, attracted artist colonies from the late 19th century on. And, of course, San Diego County boasts not only miles of picturesque coastline to inspire artists, but also mountains, bluffs, deserts and back-country wilderness.
Plein air paintings complement the Arts and Crafts philosophy of living close to nature.  “California’s appeal included the variety of vegetation, some native, other imported, and the special light and atmosphere that gave a greater range and intensity to color,” Richard Guy Wilson wrote in “The Arts and Crafts Movement in California: Living the Good Life.”
Often, the artist conveys emotional fervor and a sense of well being in a plein air painting.  It “does something that photography can’t,” said Nikole Stephenson of Art Expressions Gallery. “It almost captures something permanently that’s ephemeral.”
Contemporary plein air painting is “our mainstay” at the gallery, Stephenson said, citing the work of Robin Hall, of Capistrano Beach, among other living artists represented.  Plein air landscapes “translate well to people, whether or not they have a background in art.”
Art and antiques dealer Christopher Pro, who owns Antigua California, loves vintage plein air paintings because they record a quieter, simpler time. “You can’t go back now and get a picture of Rose Canyon before Costco [built its store there],” the San Diego native said of one idyllic example he sold to a nearby landowner. “That landscape was captured when California was truly the Golden State, before it was commercialized and cut up.”
Among the first things Save Our Heritage Organisation did when the group took over management of the historic Marston House Museum in July was to bring in a collection of plein air landscapes by prominent San Diego painters.  Early 20th-century paintings by Charles Fries (1854-1940), Maurice Braun (1877-1941) and Alfred Mitchell (1888-1972) are on loan from Carmel Fine Art Gallery. Beautiful in their own right, the subjects of the paintings also help tell the story of George White Marston’s interest in historic preservation (Mission de Alcala) and public parks (he donated land to establish Anza-Borrego Desert State Park).
In addition, Mitchell’s portrait of his own beloved house on 31st Street in South Park is on view.  Mitchell traded a painting for the architectural services of Richard Requa and his young draftsman, Lloyd Ruocco, then helped construct the house, which he and his wife named Deep Hearth.
Many of these paintings are for sale, with part of the proceeds benefitting SOHO’s Marston House Fund. Period pieces, chosen for local relevance and era, will rotate, so repeat visitors have something new to see, said Alana Coons, SOHO’s events and education director.
A lyrical painting of willowy pepper tree leaves by Ellen Farr (1840-1907), a prolific artist, is on loan from Pro. He thinks Farr, who moved to Pasadena in 1895, probably sold a lot of small paintings to tourists who tucked them in their suitcases to take back East as souvenirs. In a similar vein, two botanical studies of roses of California by Albert Valentien, a painter and potter who lived for a time in North Park with his artist wife, Anna, hang in the Marston House sewing room.
Pro and other experts advise budding collectors to study the paintings on view at the Marston House, local art museums and galleries known for vintage San Diego paintings, such as Alcala Gallery in La Jolla, and to research artists and art history before considering a purchase. Gallery talks — such as one SOHO recently held on the thundering stagecoach paintings of Marjorie Reed (1915-1996) — are another way to familiarize yourself with an artist or genre.
A signed painting in its original period frame can be a visual treasure and a valuable find that enhances one’s home and daily life. For contemporary plein air paintings, Art Expressions Gallery suggests traditional gold-leaf frames.
Be open to surprises, said Pro. “It doesn’t have to be a Mitchell or Fries, but someone who captured the essence of a place.”
Many paintings are by artists whose names were not recorded for posterity and still more are unsigned, making research nearly impossible. Pro said not to shy away from such paintings, if they speak to you. Since unsigned works typically cost less, Pro estimated a budding collector could put a small collection together for as little as $1,000.
Patience may be required if you’re looking for a vintage painting of the San Diego Mission de Alcala or Balboa Park during the 1930s. Pro thinks San Diegans hold on to paintings of such local significance.
But you never know what might turn up at galleries, estate sales, antiques shops or even on eBay. Just be sure to follow the experts’ advice: Buy what you love. z