“There is nothing that adds to the cheerfulness and cleanliness of a house better than glazed tile.” -Rufus B. Keeler, Malibu Potteries
RTK Studios
Ojai, Calif.
It’s always intriguing to delve into the lives of tile artisans, discovering the source of their devotion to ceramics. Richard Keit at RTK Studios is no exception. Reading Logan Hall’s words in California 101 Travelers Guide reveals an early period in Richard’s life that reaches the heart of his lifelong obsession with tiles.
Santa Catalina Island, off the Southern California coast, was purchased by William Wrigley, Jr. in 1919, who established a brick and tile pottery there in the early 1920s. The result is a multitude of colorful tile installations throughout the town of Avalon. As a youngster, Richard would travel to the island with his father and seven sisters during the summer where his dad put him in charge of entertaining the girls.
What could be more fun than locating all of the tile installations in Avalon, doing rubbings on the decoratives, piecing shards together, and eventually even restoring the broken tiles installed around the village? These ventures to the island put Richard in contact with staff at the Catalina Island Company as well as others of prominent means seeking his talents.
One such person was John Gabriel Beckman (1898-1989), a well-known artist responsible for the painted murals on the exterior of Wrigley’s casino in Avalon built in 1929. It was Beckman’s dream to someday transform these murals into tiles. In 1986, approaching the end of his life and recognizing the talent of this young frequent visitor, Beckman offered the job to Richard Keit, who at that time worked from a studio of only 60 sq. ft., across the waters in Thousand Oaks, Calif. This job along with others allowed for the studio to be moved to larger quarters where studio space increased to 400 sq. ft.!
In 1990 Richard teamed up with Mary Kennedy, an artist and designer, the perfect match for this growing business. The couple found an old bungalow in Ojai, Calif., just east of Santa Barbara, converting it into a studio that feels like a comfortable Arts and Crafts home, but suited to produce a continuous stream of decorative tiles and murals using the ancient cuerda seca technique developed centuries ago in the Middle East, and later popularized in southern Spain
The magic is in the dry line that is screened onto a fired tile’s surface that keeps the different glazes separate from one another. Richard is the magician, having developed over 70,000 reliable glazes.
Native Tile & Ceramics
Torrance, California
Diana Mausser’s story begins in 1990 with a tile depicting Saint George and the Dragon in dire need of repair. She was working as a glaze technician at a tile company, one of several she’d worked for in Southern California since graduating from UCLA, where tiles were not repaired or reproduced. But she took on the responsibility herself based upon the ceramic work she had done while earning her Bachelor’s Degree in Design. She was able to match the glaze on her own, and assist the customer with the needed repair. So pleased was she with the results of her efforts, she left the company, found a 500- sq.-ft. wooden shed near the beach at Marina del Rey, and started her own company, Native Tile & Ceramics.
Diana initially focused on small restoration jobs to gain a local reputation for the quality of her work, adding handcrafted decorative tiles in the California Mission, Spanish and Craftsman styles.
Her inner artist was released as she began recreating colors and textures of old glazes and designing her own versions of historic California-styled tiles.
In 1998, Native Tile moved from the shed to a converted stucco bungalow with a large back yard in Old Torrance. “Here, in the company of two sun-loving cats and a few chickens, each tile is truly handmade,” she said. “I work with my talented team of artisans to bring my tile designs to life with over 1,100 distinctive Craftsman, Spanish and Moorish-style tile designs.”
Since that first dragon tile, Diana continues to tell a story through her tiles, always ready for another dragon to light up her imagination.
Photographer: Brica Wilcox
Photographer: Jack Noble
Photographer: Brica Wilcox
Photographer: Joseph Viterbo
Sheila A. Menzies and Joseph A. Taylor
Joseph Taylor and Sheila Menzies founded the Tile Heritage Foundation in 1987 in Healdsburg, Ca. This archival library and resource center is dedicated to the preservation of ceramic surfacing materials in the United States. The archives catalog information about historic and contemporary tile companies in the United States, and maintains a collection of over 4,000 historic and contemporary tiles, all of them donated. The non-profit Foundation is maintained by sponsorship, grants, gifts and membership, as well as contemporary tile sales. Visit http://www.tileheritage.org for more information.
