Pond Farm

Pond Farm (also known as Pond Farm Workshops) was an American artists’ colony that began in the 1940s and, in one form or another, continued until 1985. It was located near the Russian River resort town of Guerneville, California, about 75 mi (120 km) north of San Francisco. Situated on a hilltop 600 ft (180 m) above the Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve, Pond Farm began around 1939-40 when a San Francisco-based couple named Gordon and Jane Herr (architect and writer, respectively) acquired a portion of property called Rancho Del Lago or the Walker Ranch. Initially 250 acres (1.0 km²), their property was later expanded to 400 acres (1.6 km²). Because one of its primary features was a large pond, the Herrs renamed this setting Pond Farm.

Inspired by such precedents as the Bauhaus, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, Eliel Saarinen’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Black Mountain College, the Herrs envisioned Pond Farm as an artists’ community that would in part support itself through summer workshops. According to their son (Jonathan Herr), Gordon Herr regarded Pond Farm as “a sustainable sanctuary for artists away from a world gone amuck,” while for Jane Herr, “it was a new beginning after rejecting conventional city upbringing” (Schwarz 2007, p. 315). Working together, the Herrs became able practitioners of homestead farming. They raised a wide variety of livestock; planted fruit orchards, nut trees and vegetable gardens; and established several fish ponds.

In 1939, Gordon Herr traveled to Europe to search for artists whose beliefs and personalities might be compatible with his own. While in Putten, the Netherlands, he met the proprietors of the Het Kruike (Little Jug) pottery shop. They were Frans Wildenhain and his wife Marguerite Wildenhain (née Friedlaender), who had moved to Holland from Germany, where both had studied pottery at the Weimar Bauhaus. Herr urged them to emigrate to the U.S., in order to become a part of Pond Farm Workshops. The Wildenhains hesitated initially, but only six months later, when the Nazis invaded Poland, they wrote to Herr, asking if his offer stood. It did, and on March 3, 1940, Marguerite departed for the U.S. Her husband, however, was left behind, because the quota for German citizens had been filled. She was Jewish, he was not.

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