Architectural jewelers
Of course they love the people “gone” on tile, although they often have to be the ones to tell them not to overdo it, that a bench or fountain here or there as a “surprise” might be preferable to paving over paradise. Then again, some of the more spectacular pieces that Richard Keit and Mary Kennedy have done in their careers as tile artisans (26 years for him, 15 for her) include the large outdoor “rugs” like the one going next to the pool at the Ojai Valley Inn & Spa. Like realist paintings, they give people pause; it takes a moment to discern they’re not Persian rugs but ceramic tiles, painted and hand-glazed with some of the 30,000 colors the couple have conceived at their Ojai studio.
Their emphasis is California Arts & Crafts tile, which enjoyed a brief and glorious aria in the 1920s but was silenced by the Depression. Keit, emboldened by the response he saw to the 1980 Craft and Folk Art Museum show on California tile, picked up where P.K. Wrigley’s Catalina tileworks and the Adamson family’s Malibu operation left off. Inside the “Wind in the Willows”-looking bungalow that serves as the couple’s showroom and cookery, it could easily be an afternoon in Avalon at the height of Wrigley’s beneficence, when tourist-shop tiles bright with toucans and macaws and “postcard” scenes were just a fraction of what Catalina’s kilns were producing. They’re faithfully rendered in the front-room display, along with tiles showing the couple’s own extension of that artistic vision. “We’re always thinking, what would the tile designers be doing now?” says Keit. Kennedy sees how restoring or adding tile is one way to acknowledge a home’s growing value. “I call it architectural jewelry,” says Keit.
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(Tile Tip) RTK Studios has a small number of tiles that are held back from sale because they don’t meet order specifications. They can be bought at discounted prices and used to make broken-tile walkways, gates, tables or vases. Look in the crafts section of any bookstore or library for manuals on how to make broken-tile installations or objects.
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RTK Studios, 206 Canada, Ojai; (805) 640-9360.