Earnest A. Batchelder

American
(1875–1957)

Tile
1910

4 x 4 x 0.75 in.

Earnest Batchelder (1876 – 1957) drew his design inspirations from the Middle Ages, Mayan patterns, Byzantine themes, animals, birds, and flora and fauna. These animal tiles are excellent examples of Batchelder’s work and the themes depicted in them set his work apart from the dozens of other tile makers in southern California at the time. Batchelder’s single-fire process used engobes, rather than glaze with two firings. Engobes are a colored clay slip pooled in the recesses of the relief design while the raised surface was wiped clean to be in contrast to the earthenware clay color. At Batchelder’s factory, 175 employees hand molded tiles and he boasted that “No two tiles the same.” The tiles were hugely popular, and by the 1920s, they could be found on walls, floors and fireplaces in countless homes, hotels, chapels, apartments, shops, restaurants, swimming pools and businesses from New York City to California.

Born 1875, in New Hampshire, Earnest Batchelder completed art education classes at the Massachusetts Normal Art School, now Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He moved to Pasadena, California in the early 1890s to teach metalwork, pottery, and tile-making at Throop Polytechnic Institute in Pasadena (now California Institute of Technology), where he later served as the director of art until 1909. That year he built a kiln behind his Pasadena home and entered the business of making hand-crafted art tiles. He became the first manufacturer for quality decorative tile in the region and many southern California architects used them in their buildings. He ushered in the golden age of California tile making with Arts and Crafts-inspired tiles. Batchelder’s distinctive earthenware relief tiles were highly influenced by his 1905 European tour where he studied in Birmingham and the English Cotswolds. His training in the Arts and Crafts Movement there laid the ground work for his later style.

Billie Sessions, PhD.

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This object was included in the following exhibitions:

• Ceramic Case 7: Southern California Connections , 8/17/2012 - 11/4/2013
• ARTH 4790 & 6790: History of American Studio Craft (Ceramics) , 2/6/2015 - 10/9/2015
• Ceramic Niches - Mold Making , 9/15/2018 - 5/4/2019
• Unearthed , 8/23/2022 - 5/14/2023

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