Top 5 Fountain Conversions

Fountain conversions have become a signature service of Eye of the Day. Spring and Summer is the time to order this popular water feature. From classic shapes to more contemporary forms, fountain conversions are an elegant addition to any garden design. Depending on the style and aesthetic of the garden, the conversion process starts with choosing a container. Almost any vessel at Eye of the Day can be converted, but there are definite favorites at the store. We rank the top five fountain conversions that homeowners and designers love.

5. French Terracotta Fountain Conversions

While not as common a choice for a fountain conversion, French Anduze pots and biots are an elegant option for a water feature. We recommend sealing for this type of terracotta, especially to protect the glaze,

4. Concrete Fountain Conversions

Our American made concrete pots are the ideal containers for both contemporary and traditional styles. These water features can be made up of different concrete garden décor pieces from birdbaths and urns, to ponds and containers.

 

This custom feature uses a concrete birdbath set into a pond based on an English garden the clients loved while visiting England.

 

This design used two American made concrete pots for the conversion. A custom insert was used for the flat spout.

 

3. Greek Terracotta Fountain Conversions

Here in California, Mediterranean style gardens are popular throughout the state. With sunshine filled days, proximity to the ocean, and lush plant life, our similar climates are the ideal foundation for a Mediterranean garden. Our Greek line of terracotta pottery is a popular option for containers and fountain conversions.

The Michalis pot fountain conversion was a popular design for Bay Area designer, Rebecca Sweet. Its classic shape was perfect for the Mediterranean garden design of her Palo Alto clients.

2. Italian Terracotta Fountain Conversions

Eye of the Day specializes in Italian terracotta pottery. Naturally, many clients and designers choose an Italian terra cotta pot as the vessel for their fountain conversion. We carry classic, ornate, and contemporary styles.

1. Gladding McBean Oil Jar Fountain Conversions

This is the most popular fountain conversion we do—and with good reason. The classic oil jar shape is a favorite among customers and as a water feature, it becomes a striking focal point in the home or garden. Available in a variety of colorful glazed finishes from Gladding McBean, both traditional and modern designs can incorporate this oil jar fountain conversion. The GMB88-33 is the most popular, but the GMB45 with the narrow neck is a lovely option as well.

Get inspired with the pottery and containers from Eye of the Day for your next garden design project. Contact us today to learn more about fountain conversions.

 

It’s that time of year where we honor and celebrate our mothers–Moms, foster Moms, grandmothers, and the ones who become our second, or even third, moms.

Show how thankful you are for the moms in your life with something special from Eye of the Day. Our gift guide has something unique for all different tastes and budgets.

1. Handpainted Terracotta Jar
These jars, painted by hand in traditional Italian styles are classics for a reason. Gift one for the classy lady in your life.

2. Mexican Church Candles
These are our most popular items in the Gift Shop. These creamy candles are made with layers of paraffin and cotton wicks. Great addition for the home.

3. Note Cards with Paintings by Karin Shelton
Made by local Santa Barbara artist Karin Shelton, these note cards showcase lovely plants or landscapes from the area. A unique Mother’s Day card for your favorite lady.

4. Demijohns
These recent additions to the store are vintage glass bottles originally used for food and liquid storage. They make lovely pieces for indoor decor.

5. Mini Greek Pots
These are a personal favorite. These gorgeous handcrafted pots made on the island of Crete are perfect for indoor or outdoor container gardening. Instead of arranging flowers, create a mini garden for Mom–it’ll last longer than flowers, too!

 

Contact us for more information about our Gift Shop. We hope everyone has a lovely Mother’s Day weekend!

“Can I go with you?” or “I’ll carry your bags” is a refrain I often hear when someone learns I’m going to Italy for work. Traveling to Italy to buy terracotta pottery for our store sounds like a pretty good job, and it is when you don’t have to do it every other month.  It’s not that I don’t love the time in Italy, but it takes a day to get there and a day to get back.  Remember, I’m not flying on Air Force One, I’m flying coach.

I don’t have a bag for you to carry because I’ve figured out how to travel in Europe for a month or more with just the bag on my back. I take the same train, rent the same car, eat at—well here is where it can get interesting—after a long day going from terracotta pottery factory to terracotta pottery factory, I usually can find a great place to dine and a gelato shop with an excellent scoop. This is a consolation to twenty years of hanging out in terracotta factories and spending the rest of the time driving, don’t you think?

I am usually traveling in the winter, but this time I had (yes that’s “had”) to go in April. Spring had really sprung and Tuscany was in full bloom, trees had leaves and people were not in big fat coats. I wore a T-shirt every day. What a difference a few months can make.

Another difference was that on this trip, I didn’t go to buy terracotta pots, I went to buy garden antiques. I’ve been trying for three years to get this old guy to sell his collection of old, very old farm troughs, stones, millstones and wagons. I spent three days loading two containers and then two more days visiting manufacturers, back to Rome, back on the plane (in coach) and back to work selling pottery.

Somebody has to do it!

We sell some of the most beautiful terracotta pottery sourced throughout Europe; pottery that has been hand made the same way for centuries, even millennia.  I’m still amazed that designers and clients want us to glaze over it with today’s color choice as professed by Martha Stewart. It is not ours to ask why, we just do it, that’s why we offer a variety of custom services.  It’s what we do, sometimes even though we don’t want to.

Drilling holes, creating drip edges, adding spouts and yes, beating the crap out of a perfectly good terracotta pot so it looks old is what we call “custom services” at Eye of the Day.

Whether it is painting Greek pots in pastel colors for a Schrager Hotel in Miami Beach or sealing the inside of four large French Anduze pots for the Chateau Marmont on the Sunset Strip, we do what our clients request or need.

Call it what you want, custom, special, additional, we call it CUSTOM SERVICES!

I have to tell you this one:  a garden designer purchased a hand-carved French limestone fountain for a project. Needless to say, it had a bunch of zeros on the price tag.  The designer instructed us to paint it completely white, every inch. Go figure…

If you want a statue with its head knocked off, we’ll do it. If you want your fountain to drip better, we’ll do it, and if you want your beautiful terracotta pots painted in your school colors we’ll do it. We call it, “CUSTOM SERVICES” and we deliver. Just ask the guy in Malibu with the all-white French limestone fountain hand carved in Provence.

To learn more about our Custom Services, please contact us.

Montecito Landscape Garden Design – The Cullen Meadow

Lisa and Chris Cullen of Montecito Landscape are long time customers of Eye of the Day. We feature one of their recent designs as they transform a large lawn to a walking garden with a central water feature using a custom Eye of the Day fountain conversion.

 

Tell us a little about Montecito Landscape and this project. 

Montecito Landscape is celebrating 47 years of creating gardens in Montecito and beyond this month! We are a small, boutique company specializing in landscape design and installation. This particular project is one of our favorites. The client was very involved in the development of the design and she trusted us when we presented an out-of-the ordinary idea.

What was your client’s goal for this garden?

The area was a huge, dead lawn and with the drought and water restrictions it was going to be difficult if they wanted to keep it looking good. They wanted something drought tolerant but beautiful and interesting. Initially, the client wanted lawn, but we wanted to do something completely different from the norm. They trusted our vision and agreed to go along.

What was your initial vision for the landscape?

We wanted to eliminate the lawn all together and create a “walking garden” providing destinations that would invite meandering and discovering. We also wanted to take advantage of the outer perimeter of the property by removing the Pittosporum hedges that were cutting off what became “the forest” from the rest of the property. We created pathways and destinations in this area that connected to the main garden, so that one could enjoy it from every vantage point.

Our innovation was “The Cullen Meadow” which is a drought tolerant alternative to lawn. The “meadow” consists of drought tolerant, flowering plants such as Santa Barbara daisy, Nepeta, Carex and others that can be walked on and mowed like a lawn, but that needs only occasional maintenance. Plus, it is way more interesting than a lawn!

The idea for the central pond came from the client when she sent us a photo of one she saw in England. The minute we saw it, we knew this was exactly what this garden needed. We also needed a fountain to mitigate the noise from the street and the pond created the perfect way of integrating a water feature into the design.

 

 

Were there any unique problems that came up during the design or installation?

Working out how to make the “Cullen Meadow” something that could be used as a lawn and how to lessen the street sounds and visual distraction of cars going by without blocking the distant views.

What would you describe as your garden design aesthetic and how do you work with your client’s own vision for the landscape?

We work with Nature not against her. We design gardens that are cohesive from conception to the finished product. A garden should flow, it should “feel right”. They should have a theme, a vibe and a sense of place. Our designs take the entire property into account, taking advantage of the unique qualities and features of that specific property. We begin by looking at what makes the space special, what are the assets and work out how we can use those features to their best advantage. We also believe that drought tolerant gardens can be beautiful. They can have roses, camellias and even hydrangeas if planted in the appropriate location and using correct gardening technique.

We love to collaborate with the client. We spend time with them, driving around if needed, pointing out various gardens so that we can tune into their specific aesthetic and discover exactly how they envision using the garden. We want our clients to get out and be in their gardens so we design for the individual. Gardens are for living and we know we have been successful when we hear how much our clients love their new landscapes.

 

For the garden décor, why these pieces?

The fountain needed to be simple and the correct scale if it was to work in the pond. The pond is 15 feet across and is the main feature of the landscape design, so the fountain needed to be perfect. Brent Freitas at Eye of the Day helped us in selecting the exact right fountain and we (and the client) are very happy with the result.

What was your favorite part of this project and design?

The central pond, fountain and the “meadow” are what make this garden so special. We knew the house and the location deserved something special and I think we succeeded. I love water features, ponds, and fountains and believe that every garden needs one or two for the visual and musical sound aesthetic. Fountains and water features can be “tuned” to fit the type of effect you are trying to create. And fountains are not just for aesthetic reasons! A fountain brings birds and bees to a garden and we all know how important the birds and the bees are!

 

Visit Montecito Landscape to view more of their work.

In a Glazed Daze in Italy: Glazed terracotta pottery

From concrete planters to Italian terracotta pots, custom glazing has been one of Eye of the Day’s strengths for over fifteen years. We are sometimes amazed by the wild colors envisioned by one designer after another for special colors or finishes, but always try to provide what each designer or client requests. Either the beauty, quality and history of the colorful kiln-fired glazes produced by our most treasured American manufacturer, Gladding McBean, or hand painted and stained Greek pots made the same way for millennia will fulfill most requests.

As the largest distributors in the USA of the famed French Provencal pottery known as Vase Anduze, we have a wide selection of colors and sizes. We ship them from New York to San Diego and Washington state to Florida. Colorful pottery is the finishing touch:  the eyeliner, pearls and earrings for your home and garden.

Last month my son had his winter break and was able to go to the Terrecotte San Rocco factory in Italy with me to see the glazes they have started to produce. Part of preparing our children for the world and possibly to follow in our footsteps is to share our day to day labors. I wanted to take Ben to the factory so he could see it and be part of the process as well as to show him where this historic tradition of terracotta pottery comes from. We Segwayed our way around Rome seeing sites with historic statues, fountains, and pots from past millennia. The context was not lost on him and when we got to the Rocco factory, he was as dazzled with the new colors as I was.

For more than five years our largest factory, Terrecotte San Rocco has been experimenting and testing glazes to add to their impressive line of fine, frost proof terracotta pottery and their range of colors is magnificent and beautiful. Now we can offer all the great shapes in colors, including custom colors, to our clients. Don’t be afraid to dream up impossible colors for all of Rocco’s fabulous shapes.

We’ll dazzle you!

Brent