Ernest A. Batchelder

Ernest Allan Batchelder (January 22, 1876 – August 6, 1957) was an American artist and educator who made Southern California his home in the early 20th century. He is famous as a maker of art tiles and as a leader in the American Arts and Crafts Movement.

In 1894 Ernest A. Batchelder began attending classes at Massachusetts Normal Art School (now Massachusetts College of Art and Design), which was founded in 1873 with the intention to support the Massachusetts Drawing Act of 1870 by providing drawing teachers for the public schools as well as training professional artists, designers, and architects. In 1899 he received his Public School Class diploma. Batchelder came to Pasadena, California, in the early 1900s to teach, and became director of the art department at Throop Polytechnic Institute, the predecessor of the California Institute of Technology.

Batchelder's life took a turn in 1909 when, behind his house overlooking the Arroyo Seco, he built a kiln and entered the business of creating hand-crafted art tiles. The tiles were hugely popular, and by the 1920s, Batchelder’s tiles could be found in homes and buildings across the United States. Batchelder’s prominence in Southern California's art community included his involvement in the founding of the Pasadena Art Institute and his membership in the Pasadena Society of Artists. Batchelder was also the third Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Pasadena Playhouse, to which he contributed an original tile fireplace and fountain (recently restored).

The style in which Batchelder worked was highly distinctive. First, he used a single-fire process known as engobe in which a primary wash of colored clay slip (usually pale blue) was applied to the surface of the tile before being fired, pooling in the recesses of the design, with excess being wiped off. Then the tile was fired. A typical glazed tile is fired twice–once before glaze, and once after, thereby sealing in the added color. Batchelder's designs often drew on Medieval themes but also included flowers, vines, and California oaks; birds, particularly peacocks; Mayan patterns; Byzantine themes; and geometric shapes.

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