Featured Saving Historic Batchelder Tile Installations

Story is mostly about LA's Dutch Chocolate Shop but talks about some others.

http://la.curbed.com/archives/2014/...as_centuryold_batchelder_tile_masterpiece.php

 

Yep, been to many a estate sale in Los Angeles with Batchelder, Catalina, Malibu, and D&M tiles. Stuff is destroyed and/or stolen all the time. Even at my kids grade school built in 1949 had great custom murals in the bathrooms and at the water fountains (under ocean sea themes and nursery rhymes). While my kids were attending the school around 2005 or so, the school was slated for remolding, I made huge fuss about the tiles... no-one would listen, summer vaca arrived and the adorable hand made tiles were replaced with plastic sheets that looked like tile. No one knew where the tiles went. Made me sick.

 

Fantastic article, Brad. Thank you so much for sharing it!

 

You are welcome. I love the internet for this kind of stuff but only get half the work I need done as a result

 

I would love to have lived in a world where things like a chocolate shop looked like this ! I often wonder when we lost the desire to make our surroundings beautiful.

 

Hi,
So much is bulldosed. Look at this church's stained glass windows and marble statues.
greg View attachment 11283

 

nobody thought to save those windows.......that's a historical crime !!

 

Can't imagine someone destroying a church like that in this day and age. Unfortunately, attached decorative parts of building such as tiles, decorative details, and windows have been overlooked as art. Of course much of this has changed but there is still the mentality that the old needs to be destroyed to make way for the new.

Watching many of the House Hunter HGTV episodes over the years, I have seen many a client react negatively to the Batchelder tile fireplaces found in the California episodes. Only occasionally will they feature clients looking for something with historic significance. Most want new and can't wait to rip out the exact things about the homes that would make them desirable to me.

 

Several of the ancient Scandinavian stave churches were destroyed fairly recently by neo-pagan vandals

 

Hi,
The church was demolished 5 years ago. It was so horrible.
greg

 

So sad to destroy such beauty. Just like ISIS bulldozing so much history in the Mid East.

 

Whadaya make of this?
I saw another one listed recenyly on Ebay, but is now gone.
It's part of a wall fountain, me thinks.
I am in So Cal, where it was found.
Thinking it could be Batchelder, Malibu, Gladding McBean or Catalina.
Thoughts?

 

boy are you on the wrong thread............
stay on the same FORUM.....but please post this again as a NEW thread....

 

You were thinking baptismal font?

 

I jumped on do to the convo about Batchelder.
I didn't even look at the date of the last thread... har har.
Will do.