Lisa Cox, of Lisa Cox Landscape Design has happily designed landscapes ranging from simple tract homes to vast estates.  As she plans an outdoor environment, she envisions a transformation that communicates the lifestyle and personal taste of the client, while incorporating her own style. Each garden is designed and built with all materials including stone, plants, trees, water features, and garden art selected by Lisa using local, top qualified growers and suppliers.

Commitment to sustainability, the use of drought tolerant plants and trees, including California natives, has been an integral part of her design process, allowing a more “naturalistic” result that mimics the local terrain.

When Lisa met with her new clients in the Santa Ynez Valley, they requested that the newly constructed home not have any sod in the front area, and that she use drought tolerant plants including grasses and succulents. Working with a blank slate, except four nice sized olive trees at the entrance, she was free to design the space, including selection of a plant palette that complimented the Hacienda style of the home. With the use of local sandstone boulders, salvias and phormiums as her base, she also incorporated deciduous trees and perennials for color in the Spring and Summer, and a few rows of grape vines because after all, it’s the Santa Ynez Valley!

Choosing Greek terracotta pots from Eye of the Day, filled with “Blue Glow” Agaves gave the clean, rustic look she was looking for on the front porch and the traditional Terrecotte San Rocco terracotta pot in front worked perfectly to show off the “Little Ollie.”

It seems everything progressed perfectly for Lisa and her clients, but there WERE a few important challenges:

1. The need to place a gopher basket for every plant as the local area is inundated with gophers that would quickly destroy the plantings, and
2. The necessity of paying close attention to selecting plants that can stand the heat as well as the sometimes frigid nights where temperatures can go into the low 20’s or below.

As Lisa’s work on the project came to a close, she felt deep satisfaction; in fact she felt this was a home environment she could inhabit herself.  The project was a dream to work on and the end result was exactly what the homeowner envisioned.

Visit Lisa Cox Landscape Design to view more of her work.

Terra Incognito: The Method Behind the Form

There are various forming methods than can be used when working with clay.  As a self-proclaimed clay nerd, I can tell you that one of my favorite parts of the journey is actually forming the piece. There is a “form” and there is a “surface” and if you learn to treat the two as separate aspects of the same whole, you will have a successful composition. In ceramics, there are many ways to form something from clay. For example, a piece  of clay can be thrown on a potter’s wheel, press molded, slump molded, pinched into shape, coiled, built with slabs or extruded.

For this article I want to focus on just three forming methods: Throwing, Press Molding, and Coiling.

Throwing
To “throw” is to form clay using a potter’s wheel.  As the clay spins on the wheel it is then “lifted” into shape. This is a very popular method, usually used to fashion functional or utilitarian pieces, such as plates, cups, bowls, teapots, or containers.

The word “throw” comes from the old English meaning to twist, turn, or propel—a perfectly apt definition. The potter’s wheel is a relatively new invention in the 30,000 year history of ceramics, and not used by all clay cultures. Much of the Greek pottery at Eye of the Day is wheel thrown.

Press Molding

Press Molding is when a piece of clay is actually pressed into a mold or form. The mold is made from an original form which is made from clay, then reproduced in Plaster of Paris, which becomes the mold so the shape can be replicated over and over again. This is a particularly helpful method when forming large pieces that would otherwise be hard to reproduce. The Italian terracotta carried at Eye of the Day is traditionally press molded.

Coiling

Coiling is one of the oldest methods for forming clay. The material is rolled back and forth until it looks like a “rope” of clay. You begin with a shape in mind, then the coils are placed on top of each other until the desired shape is formed. This is a particularly slow method, the clay needs to harden a bit before more coils can be stacked, so a potter will begin one piece and then move to another to begin, then move to another, and so on. By the time he has begun say the fourth or fifth shape, the first one will be stiff enough to continue the next phase of the shape.

Eye of the Day has an array of vessels produced using each of these traditional methods, authentically manufactured and imported directly from the very best potteries of the world.

Planted pots and containers add color and visual interest to your landscape design, garden and outdoor living areas. Choosing the right pots can be a challenge with the wide variety of options available today. Consider adding beautiful Italian terracotta pottery, created to handle the elements and last for decades.

What is Galestro Clay?
Eye of the Day’s Italian terracotta pottery is fabricated from Galestro clay, fired at an extremely high temperature. It is a high-quality, dense clay known for creating particularly durable pots, frost resistant to -15 degrees Fahrenheit. Galestro clay is found in Tuscany, near the borders of Grosseto, Arezzo and Siena. Pots made from this clay are created by hand and air-dried before firing. If conscientiously maintained, this pottery will last decades.

Terracotta Pottery: Style
In addition to customary classic pottery like the beloved double roll rim, more ornate Italianate styles featuring details such as garland, rosette and leaf motifs, are available to infuse your home with old-world design. Eye of the Day’s Terre Colorate line brings clean, modern Italian design to contemporary garden style.

Whatever your garden style, with Eye of the Day’s help you can add a clear visual appeal using Italian terracotta pots.

Eye of the Day Garden Design Center provides high quality pots for decoration and for planting. Learn more about our Italian terra cotta pottery.

In late Spring the opportunity to sell a complete container of Terrecotte San Rocco came our way.  Kitchell Construction was managing the building and development of a large estate in the greater Denver area and because of Eye of the Day’s past and current collaborations with them, we were recommended by their Santa Barbara team.

Everyone knows it snows at a mile high in the sky and when you’re building a large Mediterranean style house and need frost-proof terracotta pottery, who do you call? Sound the trumpets please: Eye of the Day, of course. As an authority on clay, we were able to help them select a large and diverse range of Italian terracotta pottery made from Galestro clay which comes with a ten-year warranty to minus 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Many people, including design professionals, incorrectly refer to this Italian clay as “Impruneta,” a village commune near Florence, Italy.

It has been 35 years since I was last in Denver, Colorado—what a vibrant and exciting place. I arrived to meet the container of our great Italian terracotta pottery for the project and took public transportation into the city center for far less than a shuttle, cab, or using Über. Two stops after stepping on the bus, I stepped off at the new, super organized terminal right in downtown, not far from the ballpark where the Rockies play. Across the street I stepped on the free Mall Shuttle, which took me to the other end of 17th Street and dropped me off outside the Sheraton Hotel.  Because I got there a day before the container was being delivered from the port in Houston, I walked the downtown, my pedometer said almost seven and a half miles in a day and a half which is about what I walk each day at the store.

The mixture of old and new architecture is very simpatico in Denver. I’ll bet there are dozens of brick buildings that are made from Gladding McBean bricks and they look even more beautiful today almost a hundred years later.

The development of downtown Denver looks more like Manhattan than Los Angeles with multiple high-rise residential buildings and projects throughout the city. Gleaming steel and glass buildings shadowing older low-rise buildings like a six-foot grandson might put his arm around his grandpa. They go together well in Denver. The ballpark on one side of downtown and Mile High Stadium on the other with an extreme amount and variety of great microbrews in between.

Here’s to being a Mile High!

Inside the Pieces: Why We Love Authentic Pottery
Baked Earth series with Scott Semple

Hello to all and nice to be here again. It’s a classic Fall morning here on the Central Coast. I am currently walking around the Eye of the Day showroom, sipping Mint tea, trying to keep Shorty the dog at bay and writing to an enthusiastic yet invisible audience about my favorite messy, muddy medium: clay.

So, I’ve been thinking about this word “authentic.”

The first time I stepped foot into this showroom, I’m pretty sure what came out of my mouth was, “Wow, finally, authentic pieces.” I feel blessed to have traveled a good part of the world. I have not only seen, but intentionally sought out traditional pottery in villages from the foothills of Guatemala to Pokhara Nepal, from the backside of Cuba, to the historic potteries of Crete and mainland Greece. Knowing a thing or two about pottery and what it takes to build large format ceramic vessels, I walk in to Eye of the Day and immediately I’m transported to the smell of Turkish coffee in the Mediterranean, or the intense glow of a Native American dung firing.

This showroom is the gathering place of authenticity. You can look down inside these big pots and see what it took to make them, the marks that the sponge leaves while it spins on the wheel, the throw lines, and where sections of the piece were connected and not only joined, but adorned. The Greek ware in particular is notorious for actually celebrating the area on a vessel, like this one, where sections of spun clay were joined together to make a much larger form. I can see handles on pots that at first glance seem just like handles but are actually an integral part of how the artist moves the piece from the kiln to the customer. Or all these pots that have tool marks inside them from popping the occasional, yet inevitable air bubble. It’s all there, inside the pieces.

I’m talking about form—the mark of what it took to create the form, the container, not the decoration or the way the fire has licked it here or there on the surface. I tell my students almost daily, there is a form and there is a surface. Learn to treat each as a separate component, and you will be successful in clay. The form by itself should stand up to serious critique.

The work for sale at Eye of the Day is authentic. Not overly decorated or gaudy, not borrowed to look like it’s from some other culture. It is Authentic Classicism, coming from some of the few places in the world that are still producing wares that are handmade, timeless classical forms. We end up longing for these pieces, like touchstones from a place and time in history.

My last stop on the showroom tour has brought me to the Italian terracotta. Eye of the Day has the largest collection of authentic Italian terracotta containers from Terrecotte San Rocco in the entire country. There is so much handmade information in these vessels, I could talk and talk about it (as you probably guessed). But for now, I promise to revisit this topic of Italian Terrecotte San Rocco. How it is built, where the clay comes from, why it is frost resistant and more.

But until then, get to know what is inside a vessel, not just its outer reveal.
See you next month!

In February of 1998 our lives were changed forever by El Niño. Eye of the Day was in its infancy, just two and a half years old and we became a statistic as the worst damaged business in Santa Barbara County. The federal government declared a disaster area and we lost nearly everything. But…what we didn’t know was that our journey was about to take us on a brilliant detour.

From its inception, the Eye of the Day plan was to sell pottery, fountains, statuary and other garden products. There were a lot of nurseries but not many focusing on accouterments for the garden. We began by selling wine barrel planters, Mexican pottery, American made concrete fountains, benches, bird baths and lots of colorful pots. At Christmas we sold only the Noble Fir. But then the forces of nature randomly decided to take us out.

There is a saying that when a door closes a window opens; I was looking for a window and it turned out to be FEMA. With a new FEMA loan and a lot of help from friends, Eye of the Day quickly found a new home in a bigger market, picked ourselves up off the very wet pavement and began again.

After we opened our doors in our new (and current) location in the small beach town of Carpinteria, we sensed a great opportunity to grow in a way that the pre-disaster Eye of the Day would not have been able to fulfill. Our business model was limited and we needed to think bigger, so we decided that the gift shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta just didn’t provide what we needed anymore. It makes me laugh when I remember how quickly my wife, Suzi, agreed that we needed to go to Paris and check out the gift show there. We didn’t realize at the time just how prescient we were.

The first day of the show was the ultimate shopping experience but only if you were buying at least ten of everything. Included was an area for outdoor garden decor and when we walked into Francesco del Re’s booth, I knew I had found something special:  the finest handmade terracotta pottery on planet Earth. His containers were classics and many were models of forms and shapes still in service after hundreds of years, including pots or “vasi”, urns and amphorae adorning villas and palaces throughout Europe. Francesco’s display screamed CLASSIC ITALIAN TERRACOTTA to me. I vowed right then that Eye of the Day would sell Francesco del Re, just as soon as I figured out how I could afford a container.

The following year we returned to Europe, this time to Italy. Something drives me to wander and explore and I knew Francesco del Re was somewhere around Florence and I knew I would find him. I scoured the small, famous hill town of Impruneta, walking into some fabulous artisan workshops. No one knew who and where FDR was, but I learned later that in Italy, few are willing to promote someone else and everyone in that famous commune was challenged by him. The hunt was on. I didn’t travel in order to give up. It was hard work, but over our excellent lunch in Greve, the proprietor of the restaurant told me how to find the factory. By the way, we selected the restaurant for lunch because there was a pair of classic Francesco del Re Vaso Lessona urns at the front door.

I have returned to the FDR factory every year for the last sixteen years. This May I flew there for three days to help load a forty-foot container and to see Signora Elettra Brancollini, Francesco’s partner and sculptor. Sadly, our friend Signore del Re passed away two years ago, but his classics will live on for centuries in our gardens.