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!

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.

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

Are you looking for something unique or special this holiday season?  The Eye of the Day Holiday Gift Guide for 2016 has you covered. These gifts come from all around the world and are sure to be statement pieces in the home or garden.

1. French Anduze Pottery

Our handmade French terracotta Pottery from Anduze region in festive green and red make great decor not just for the holidays, but the whole year.

2. Karin Shelton Cards
Notecards featuring paintings by Santa Barbara Artist Karin Shelton. Her artwork subject matter ranges from abstract to botanical to landscape. 

3. Hand painted Tunisian Bowls
Crafted and hand painted from Tunisia, these bowls are food safe and lead free.

4. Chivas Skincare Facial Cream
From Filmore based skin care company and goat farm, this facial cream features a unique blend of goat milk, avocado oil, jojoba oil and vitamin E that deeply moisturizes and nourishes the skin.

5. Santa Rosa Mexican Church Candles
Our most popular Gift Shop item for a reason. These creamy candles are made with layers of paraffin and cotton wicks. Perfect for those cozy nights at home.

Visit our Eye of the Day showroom for more gift ideas or call 805-566-6500 regarding questions and availability on our gift guide products. Cheers!

Design Update with Inviting Spaces by Kim 

Eye of the Day’s large rectangular Italian terra cotta planters, the Delos, were installed recently to add impact, structure and curb appeal to the entrance of a home with an overgrown, out of proportion boxwood border.

The planters provided a win- win situation when combined with the ability to peer out each of the four windows from the living room and dining room with views of the beautiful seasonal flowers at window level.

The choice of the Delos by Kim Beber Perlmutter of Inviting Spaces by Kim was made when she saw that the vertical pattern on the planters echoed the pattern on the entrance pillars of her client’s Georgian style home, giving the impression that they were specifically designed for the space.

INVITING SPACES BY KIM

(650) 776-6123
Creating Inviting Spaces For Any Time of Day

The Clay Authority: Protecting Terracotta

As a fifth generation Californian, it’s easy for me to take beautiful weather and sunny, sandy beaches for granted, I also realize that for most of the country, this time of year presents some concerns when it comes to taking care of your garden and terracotta planters

Two years ago I wrote an article for Eye of the Day entitled “How it Works: Frost Proof Terra Cotta”. The big take away from this article are the two words “vitrify” and “porosity” that are of particular interest to those of you from areas concerned with freeze/thaw issues, due to the porosity of certain clay used to make planters.

The following month I continued with “Terra Cotta Transformations”, bringing the reader into the realm of technical ceramics by explaining what exactly happens with clay during its firing cycle.

Freeze/thaw can be viewed as synonymous with expansion/contraction. But there are also many reasons to want to waterproof pottery. Although waterproofing and frost proofing pottery both pertain to porosity, frost proofing also deals with extreme temperatures.

So as we begin to move into winter and we consider protecting our garden pottery investments, here are a few things to think about:

Protection from Frost and Cold:
If you need to protect your terra cotta from freezing, either move it inside, cover the planter (and the plants), and definitely do not over water, or if possible, don’t water at all.  A quick test for the pottery itself would be to ask the dealer where you purchased the planters if they have any pot shards. Use them to test the durability of the pottery by soaking them in water, then put them in your freezer for a day or two. If it hasn’t cracked, take it directly from the freezer and put the shard in the sun. You’ll learn about the quality of your investment.

Waterproofing Terracotta:
If your concern is waterproofing your pottery, the research is simple to find a myriad of products on the market these days to seal low fire pottery (especially for tile). If it’s high fire then you don’t have to worry about water leeching through, especially if it’s been glazed.

Let’s all settle in for what always proves to be an elegant, sometimes challenging, yet always amazing time of year—Winter!

And if you ever have any technical questions about garden pottery, feel free to consult with me through EOD.