CA-Modern Fall 2023

Efficiency

Farewell, CA-Modern: after 18-year run for our print magazine, a bittersweet transition awaits

Feature Storyboard

8

All in: Eichlers of Palo Alto’s Greenmeadow have a smart plan for sustaining ‘community’

Art About the House 14

Porcelain perfect: ceramic artist Shalene Valenzuela fools us with her ‘domestic art’

CA-Modern Flashback

20

Magical mystery lure: neon sign’s future is bright despite an iffy 100th anniversary

A SPECIAL MESSAGE FROM THE PUBLISHER

Even though our 18 years of publishing CA-Modern magazine have been thoroughly enjoyable, and our current business vibrant, we stand at a crossroads today with a heavy heart.

It’s time for us to make a change.

This will be the final issue of CA-Modern, though the Eichler Network will carry on with a new emphasis.

As we reel in the years, I’m proud to say that, as of September 2023, I’ve completed a full 30 years at the helm of the Eichler Network. When we launched this labor of love back in 1993, we were unsure where and how far our boundless energy and ideas, and little money, would take us. But such passions, at least for me, have less to do with making a profit and more about the thrill of the journey.

Our initial publication was the Eichler Network , a quarterly black-and-white newsletter that we produced for 12 years, through 2005. The following year, we launched CA-Modern, which, including this issue, thrived for 72 consecutive quarters—always mailed free to our thousands of Eichler, Streng, and other select MCM homeowners. Despite our wacky business model, somehow we managed to make it all work.

CA-Modern has been my ‘baby’ for the past two decades. I have loved every minute producing it, and have never grown weary. Having supportive staff by my side—in particular, writers Dave Weinstein and Adriene Biondo, designer Doreen Jorgensen, marketing coordinator Chris Marcoccio, and adviser Dave Kalman—has added considerable talent and camaraderie to this joyride. A sincere thanks goes out to our entire staff.

The Eichler Network, with this publisher in the driver’s seat, will continue into 2024 and beyond through our website, EichlerNetwork.com ; our annual print ‘Home Maintenance Directory’; and via our e-mailed blogs and social media. (Please join in by signing up for our twice-weekly e-newsletters at our site.)

It’s also time…to say ‘thanks to you’ for the many years of support.

–Marty Arbunich

CONTRIBUTORS

Publisher & Managing Editor Marty Arbunich marty@eichlernetwork.com

Marketing Coordinator

Chris Marcoccio chris@eichlernetwork.com

Publisher’s Consultant

Dave Kalman of Terrella Media

Features Editor Dave Weinstein

Staff Writers

Adriene Biondo

Jack Levitan

Photography

Rory Earnshaw

Print Designer

Doreen Jorgensen

Social Media Editor

Baby Doe von Stroheim

Katie Ann Gorman

Web Maintenance

Priscila Hoffman

Copyright ©2023 Eichler Network

The CA Modernist

Farewell, CA-Modern —online our next stop

Completing 18-year run, Eichler Network begins a bittersweet transition

With this issue, after 18 years and 72 issues, the CA-Modern print magazine will be no more.

Following 30 years of publishing, the Eichler Network will continue to produce new material on its website and through its blogs, e-mail newsletters, and printed ‘Home Maintenance Directory.’

The roster of contractors and other businesses that have kept its unusual publishing model flourishing for all these years will carry on as well.

“There are a number of reasons why now is the time to make this move,” says Marty Arbunich, publisher and managing editor. “It will be a bittersweet transition, but also a convenient way of easing into personal retirement—working less, enjoying life a little more—while still staying involved with the Network operation on a regular basis.”

Clearly, Marty, who also owns a classic Eichler (the all-steel X-100 in the San Mateo Highlands), could have put out a fi ne, successful publication without focusing so intently, with serious historical reporting, on such obscure topics as the history of the atrium, when aluminum sliders first developed, designers behind the fi rst butterfl y-roofed homes, how Eichler’s architects developed their styles, and how they related to the Modern Movement and Arts & Crafts.

But everything that surrounds the Eichler Network has always been about ‘labor of love.’ And we at the Network have been advocacy journalists, fighting for preservation, sometimes more purist in our dedication to the modern aesthetic than many of the people who live in the homes.

As a reporter for the Eichler Network beginning in 2003, and then longtime features editor for CA-Modern, I have been in every Eichler neighborhood but one—Thousand Oaks in Southern California—and even that one I have written about, thanks to

the miracle of the telephone. There are three Eichlers in upstate New York, and I have visited them all, enjoying a dinner in one with all three families. Has any writer alive been in more Eichlers than me? I doubt it.

I’ve produced 63 neighborhood profi les. Some have been Streng Brothers neighborhoods in the Sacramento Valley, others were built by the Alexanders in Palm Springs and

I have ever met. (Incidentally, my very last profi le of a neighborhood, the fabled Greenmeadow, appears in this issue.)

What I am most proud of about my tenure with the Eichler Network was adding to the explosive growth of interest in mid-century modern homes.

Across the globe, that renewed interest started in the mid-1990s in what came to be called ‘mid-century

A main reason I quit daily newspaper journalism in 2001 was to get involved with preserving historic places. The Eichler Network let me do that.

And what I likely will regret the most about CA-Modern ’s departure in the coming years is that, while I’ve met so many great homeowners (yes, and renters too) over the past two decades, sadly I will likely lose touch with them.

It has been wonderful, too, getting to know many of the people who helped design and build California’s modern homes, including the late Ned Eichler, Joe’s son and an important part of Eichler Homes, and the late Jim and Bill Streng. In Southern California, I got to know architects who designed homes in Palm Springs and Los Angeles, including Bill Krisel and Donald Wexler.

It’s gratifying to know that by interviewing these and other important figures over the years, I helped to preserve some history that would otherwise have been lost.

to publish. Features editor Dave Weinstein fears he “will likely lose touch” with many of the wonderful people (including Eichler residents, like the ones above) he has connected with over the years. Right: Three of the 72 published issues of CA-Modern, including the very first one (near right).

Los Angeles, and a handful were by other developers.

But most have been Eichlers.

But do I know Eichlers at all? Or Strengs?

I’ve dined and lunched in them, gone to many parties, and even spent nights in a friend’s Eichler. But I have never lived in one—day in, day out, seeing the day turn to night, watching the moon and stars from the living room through the atrium.

It’s great that the Eichler Network will continue online—and I’m looking forward to being a part of it. But as an old print guy who began reporting for daily newspapers churning out copy on typewriters, I’m afraid things just may not be the same.

For one thing, I simply won’t be meeting so many Eichler and Streng owners, who really have proven to be some of the greatest people

modern design,’ a movement that brought attention to décor, art, and architecture. Nowhere were the results stronger than in some of California’s mid-century neighborhoods.

Everyone who has a role with the Eichler Network—which began its publishing as a black-and-white newsletter in 1993, then switched to the full-color CA-Modern magazine in 2006—is proud that we have played an important role in advancing the style and ethos.

My hope is that my work has helped people in modern neighborhoods appreciate what they have; and has encouraged them to preserve what they have, through historic designati on and in other ways.

Many Eichler and Streng neighborhoods have characters who are ‘community wranglers’ known for deliberately bringing people together. One such, Dave Walter, won the title of ‘Mayor of Lyons Street’ in his compact Redwood City Eichler tract.

How do you bring people together, we asked Dave. His answer: caring for your neighbors, and enthusiasm.

“It only takes a spark,” says Dave. “It’s a spark, and other people join in.”

–Dave Weinstein

Photography: Steve Conkling, Eichler Network Archive

• For more ‘CA Modernist’ blog stories, visit EichlerNetwork.com/blogs

LOST FRIENDS. The Eichler Network’s world is going to feel a little different without a magazine

GrowinG up in the 1970s among the Eichlers in Palo Alto’s Greenmeadow, Barry Tao says, “I considered it the most boring place because it was so quiet.”

To this day the roughly 280-home enclave, Barry’s neighbor Sabine Nusser says, remains “a little town out of the ‘50s…in the middle of a city.”

Joe Eichler’s subdivision remains an entrancing place, its tree-lined, curving streets filled with houses that largely look much as they did when first built. In the center of the tract, geographically and spiritually, is a park and community center, with a swimming pool that hosts the young peoples’ Marlins swim team and more.

“We are at the pool all the time,” says Nick Nguyen, who runs an artificial intelligence startup with his wife and has lived here for nine years. “My five-year-old had a birthday party at the clubhouse, which is great because it’s a great space for entertaining.”

The pool is also central to the neighborhood’s history, unifying a community after a dramatic birth that involved Greenmeadow residents battling over control of the pool and park with a man they otherwise admired—Joe Eichler.

The neighborhood’s history was acknowledged when Greenmeadow was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

The nomination to the Register

ALLin

focused, rightly, on the tract’s birth, its architecture, its contribution to modern architecture and the growth of suburbia.

Not detailed, however, was how, over the years, neighbors banded together to form an association and keep it going when financial times were rough; to operate an effective architectural review committee; and to win protection from second-story additions, long before other Palo Alto neighborhoods woke to that danger.

The story of Greenmeadow’s birth in 1954 is known to many neighbors, thanks to oral historical video interviews produced back in 1994, now posted to YouTube.

Neighbors who’d just bought homes in the Jones & Emmons-designed tract on the promise that they would come with a “a community center swimming pool….playgrounds…nursery school,” rose in rebellion when Joe announced plans to lease the pool and community center to outside operators, who would open them to the general public.

To battle Eichler, activists in the neighborhood, which did not have a homeowners association, formed an association of a very different sort— a voluntary community association. They prepared to sue what their attorney, later Congressman, Pete McCloskey called “the Eichler Empire.”

Eichler quickly agreed to sell the park,

UNIFYING ELEMENTS. Above: The

neighborhood,

center

have always been central to life

maintain

event,

center, and pool to the new Greenmeadow Community Association. “They did a great job negotiating and got the whole thing for like $10,000,” says Sean Giffen, who, like Barry Tao, grew up in the neighborhood and lives there again. “My take is, [Joe] was probably so sick of dealing with us that he just said, ‘take it.’”

By acquiring a community asset, the association also acquired the obligation

opportunity

to care for it. “Having a pool presented a series of problems that needed to be solved,” says Glenn Story, a computer scientist who’s lived in Greenmeadow since 1978 and used to handle communications for the association. “So that required a board to do it.”

What resulted is a sort of oddball creature, a hybrid between a pool association serving anyone who cares to join,

How organizing and planning at Palo Alto’s Greenmeadow preserved its sense of community and Eichler style too

Story: Dave Weinstein

Photography : Rory Earnshaw & Sunny Jefferson

Greenmeadow pool (left) and community

(right)

in the

providing not just recreation but an

for residents to work together to

and improve the facilities. Center: A new clubhouse was built for the complex, the result of a visioning plan. Top: At Greenmeadow’s annual July 4

which features such small-town activities as the balloon toss.

and a community group representing the neighborhood on all sorts of issues.

It’s not a homeowners association that requires dues from all homeowners, but an association that runs the pool and park, which are open not to all residents but only those who voluntarily join and pay dues.

Most every family with kids in the neighborhood does join. And while

the Marlins swim team is more about enjoyment than intense competition, any number of Marlins have gone on to competitive swimming in later years.

“I started going to the pool by myself when I was four years old,” recalls Sean Giffen. “I had my swim badge…I could walk over, and my mom could watch me walk to the pool, and I’d hang out with friends.” Since moving back to the neighborhood as an adult, Sean says, the pool has been just as important to his five children.

Jeff Kmetec, a leader in the push several years ago to create a new clubhouse, says both his daughters came up through the Marlins swim team. One became head coach. It’s a typical story

for other Greenmmeadow families.

But say you don’t swim? No problem. Greenmeadow residents can join at a lower rate as a “fair share member,” which provides use of park and community center but not of the pool.

Many community leaders say that having their own pool to run has done far more for the community than providing a place to swim. It has provided a central focus, a gathering point.

“Our main job isn’t to run the pool,” Ingrid Pinsky says of the association. “Our main job is to keep the community vibrant.”

How vibrant is Greenmeadow?

When Suman Rangaswamy and husband Mahesh Kallahalla sought a Palo Alto home in 2014, Suman says, “We wanted a place where community was a very big part, where neighbors know each other.

“Because I grew up in India, where it’s like that. Neighbors, friends, everybody knows everybody. Kids spend summer

holidays, evenings playing in each other’s houses, on the streets. And everybody watches out for everybody. And when we actually saw Greenmeadow, it was all those things and more.”

While the pool remains at its heart, it does not define a community where many people never put a toe in the water.

Throughout the year the association runs events ranging from minor to major, including outdoor movie nights. “A lot of people come here from all over the world, so we’ve started doing more international events,” says Penny Ellson, an active resident since 1995. “We did Chinese New Year’s. There was a Diwali party. You didn’t see that a few years ago.”

IT’S OUR SANCTUM. The Sabine and Stefan Nusser home (above left and right) is minimally furnished, including with classic modern furnishings. “I’m generally crazy for MCM stuff,” Sabine says about a hobby that makes room for this MCM tissue dispenser (near left). Top: The Nusser family entertains on their back patio: (L-R) son Paul Nusser, daughter Hannah Nusser, neighbor Ray Narragon, Stefan Nusser, Sabine Nusser, neighbor Lisette Narragon. Bottom left: Around the neighborhood.

The biggest event every year is the Fourth of July. Its lead organizer is Sonya Bradski, who’s lived in Greenmeadow 27 years and raised three children with husband Gary. Sonya has done so much that Barry Tao calls her the “glue” that keeps the neighborhood together.

Loretta Green, a resident since 1973 who raised four children in Greenmeadow with husband Bill, was a popular columnist for the San Jose Mercury News and other Peninsula papers.

Among her topics was Greenmeadow’s annual Fourth of July, presented as “a great example of how a community organizes and pulls together, and involves all ages, and really makes it feel like a really warm, wonderful neighborhood,” she says. She wrote about the Greenmeadow band, which leads the parade.

Continued pg 11

“People bring out their old instruments, and you see everything from clarinets to recorders to just everything. The girls have a spirit team; and so the mothers make their little costumes, and so there’ll be like 15 girls in matching costumes, doing their little routine; and little children decorate their bikes.”

Loretta, who was recently given a Lifetime of Achievement award for her volunteer work throughout the wider

BORN & RAISED. Top: Sean Giffen’s home, where he grew up, is adjacent to the pool and park. Its driveway sports a vintage Mustang, one of several such in the neighborhood. Sean (inset) enjoys driving it. Above: Inside the living room (left) of Patrick and Charlyn Everett (seated right). Far right: Barry Tao is one of a handful of Greenmeadow residents who returned to the tract as adults after growing up there. Left: Norm Adams’ Eichler got a modernized façade during a sensitive remodel.

community, has been part of Greenmeadow’s small but notable Black community, which also included Roy Clay, a nowlegendary mathematician and HewlettPackard executive who pioneered the creation of the minicomputer.

“Roy was a very close family friend. Our kids all played together and he lived three blocks from here,” Loretta says.

She and Bill, a retired lawyer, have loved living in Greenmeadow, though

she does mention a few examples of prejudice: some neighbors questioning if her children lived in the neighborhood when they were trick-or-treating; her son being stopped by suspicious police while walking a bike.

Barry Tao, who says the neighborhood has become increasingly Asian, remembers that when he was a boy “we were one of maybe three Asian families here. The ethnic makeup was pretty Caucasian at the time. I remember being the only minority in class.”

The greatest change in the neighborhood, though, is its evolution from a middle-class haven to a place where homes can go for $3 million.

“Who can live here, who can afford to live here?” asks Esther Lucas, who grew up in Greenmeadow and inherited the family home. “There’s probably a big difference between those of us who inherited the property and people who can afford to buy a $3 million house.”

Still, even as the demographics changed, commitment to the community has remained strong. After the turn of the millennium, swimmers noticed that the pool needed work. Plus, the community had never had a proper clubhouse. Membership needed a boost. So people put their heads together.

Patrick Everett, who was on the

board, credits fellow board member Tim Foy, who had grown up in the neighborhood, as the visionary behind Greenmeadow 20NOW, a planning process that started in 2012 that led to the rebuilding of the pool and the creation of a brand-new, Eichler-style clubhouse.

How many neighborhoods do you know that have the wherewithal to create and follow through on a strategic plan? But the need was dire. Swim membership was dropping. The beloved neighborhood pool “now competes with fancy new facilities” at nearby institu-

tions, a 2012 report noted.

It took nearly a decade of designing, fundraising, and financing. The result is today’s pool and community center, which are heavily used by the community. There is a waiting list to become a full association member.

Tim Foy, Patrick says, “really was the one who came up with that initial idea and really made it happen.”

Another Greenmeadow institution that brings people together are the ‘blockheads.’ This is an instance in which the association reaches beyond the pool and park to embrace everyone who lives in Greenmeadow.

“There are 22 blocks” in the neighborhood, says Peyma Oskoui, who is married to Jeff Kmetec and serves as one of the blockheads. Blockheads stay in contact with residents of their area, distribute the monthly Meadowlark newsletter, and otherwise seek to build community.

“They know their neighbors,” Sigrid Pinsky says of the blockheads. “They know if something’s wrong with someone, they know if we have something to celebrate, they know who’s moving. That builds an intimacy.”

Socializing is informal and often spontaneous. “Our kids will go next door to borrow, like, a cup of sugar, and they

won’t come back for an hour,” Barry says. “We’ll go there. They’ve already eaten. They’re playing piano with our neighbor.”

Sigrid Pinksy says, “My oldest daughter, when she was about seven or eight, I told her, if anything ever happens and I’m not here, you could go to any house and knock on the door. They would probably know who you are. They probably know who I was. They might know where you live, but they would do anything for you.”

When people discuss the spirit of the Greenmeadow community, one name recurs often: Jack Hamilton, who lived in Greenmeadow with his wife, Myllicent, from 1968 to 2009, and did more than anyone, folks say, to unify the neighborhood.

“He was just a gregarious, outgoing, dedicated community member

and wanted to welcome people and share the joy of our neighborhood with them,” says Sigrid.

Jack was a teacher, a psychological counselor, and later a mediator and author of a book on resolving conflict. In Greenmeadow, he served on the association board, among other tasks, and edited the Meadowlark

“I took on the job of writing a profile of new neighbors,” Jack says. “I met a lot of people over the years that way.”

“To get new owners more integrated into the community, we started aroundthe-living-room discussions,” he says. “About once a month one owner would host. We would invite new owners for about an hour and a half. The hostess would provide cookies and coffee. We’d go around the circle, people would introduce themselves, tell us who they are.”

Over the years Jack helped the neighborhood deal with crises that could have damaged its cohesiveness. The first of these came in the late 1960s, he says, when it became clear that not

enough Greenmeadow residents were joining the association to support the pool or its other activities.

In 1968 the Greenmeadow board delved into “exploration of membership expansion,” according to an agenda in the neighborhood’s archive.

What resulted were two initiatives: Allowing people who were not residents of Greenmeadow to become pool members, and expanding the boundaries of the neighborhood itself by taking in an adjacent, much small and later Eichler tract.

It was a bold plan. Just 13 years after battling Eichler to keep non-residents out of the park and pool, the board proposed to let non-residents join as ‘associate members’ to pull in needed dues. Many people objected.

“The concern was, if enough associate members got together, they could amend the bylaws to favor associate members. That would be a sad day,” Jack says. The bylaws were amended in 1971 to allow ‘outside families’ to join and use the pool, but only “after all the

FOURTH FESTIVITIES. Top: Greenmeadow’s famed marching band takes to the streets during a recent July 4 event. Center row: A man in full Uncle Sam holiday regalia (middle) takes part in the day’s parade, while Sonya Bradski (right), a lead organizer of the event, wheels her way through it on a unicycle. Center far left: Bill and Loretta Green, enjoying a musical interlude, have lived in Greenmeadow for 50 years. Loretta was for many years a popular newspaper columnist. Above: Jeff Kmetec and Peyma Oskoui walk their dog through the park, a popular neighborhood pursuit.

GREENMEADOW ADDITION. Greenmeadow’s original sections, from the mid-1950s, were placed on the National Register in 2005. Left: Suman Rangaswamy and husband Mahesh Kallahall (here, in their kitchen) live in an adjacent 1962 Eichler tract that was added to the association in 1970. Above right: These later Eichlers do have atriums, as seen here in Suman and Mahesh’s home. Above left: The couple’s entire family gathers in the living room, with children Smriti (left) and Manu (right) in the front row. Bottom: The newer Greenmeadow Eichlers also have lively facades, including some with folded-plate rooflines. Top: Inside Ferne Court, also in the 1962 section.

residents are given the opportunity to join,” according to a meeting agenda.

In order to keep the Greenmeadow Association a true neighborhood group, and not just a body to run recreation facilities open to all, the board came up with a plan: “Associate members can’t serve on the board or vote at the quarterly meetings,” Jack summarizes.

That way, the association would run a pool open to members from outside Greenmeadow, but the association would still be run by Greenmeadow residents for the benefit of their community.

“It was a tie vote,” Jack says. “The president at the time was allowed to

vote to break the tie.”

The other effort, to add an adjacent Eichler tract of 27 homes from 1962 to the Greenmeadow association, came to pass in 1970, thus providing more people to take part in association activities.

In the early 1990s the neighborhood pioneered the idea of preserving privacy and the Eichler aesthetic by asking the city to ban second-story additions through a zoning overlay zone.

“We wanted to keep the integrity of these houses,” Sigrid Pinsky says. “It only works if we keep it with single stories. I mean, the houses are very close. And also we like the look and the peacefulness of it.”

Neighbors voted on the idea in 1992. Turnout was low, but support strong: 78 households voted aye, 16 nay. The zoning was established in 1993, and it has succeeded. “You won’t see a two-story house in Greenmeadow,” says Esther Lucas.

Greenmeadow has always had an architectural review committee, which won’t surprise visitors who can view a tract that is largely intact.

Still, Penny Ellson says, “Some houses have been substantially changed. They’re still modern, and they still have some lines of an Eichler, but they’re walking away [from the Eichler style].”

The goal of the architectural review committee, says Patrick Everett, an architect who serves on it, is “to keep the Eichlers as original as we can.”

But the committee, says member Norm Adams, “unfortunately, is in the position of mostly cajoling people,” rather than compelling them to preserve the home’s original look.

“The only recourse we would have would be to start suing people for not obeying the deed restriction [concerning architecture],” he says. “And no one’s had the appetite to go down that path.”

The way architectural review works in Greenmeadow says much about the tract’s community let’s-all-get-along ethos.

The committee does its job by “working with our neighbors, treating it as a neighborly sort of thing rather than some sort of power position,” Adams says. “And I think that that’s helped us kind of win them over with respect and kindness.” ■

• Eichler’s Greenmeadow is bordered by E. Charleston Road to the north, Alma Street to the west, and by Nelson Drive to the east. To the south, the 1962 Eichlers are found on Ferne Avenue, Ferne Court, and Briarwood Way.

Additional photography: Dave Weinstein; and courtesy Greenmeadow Community Association

Porcelain perfect

From toasters to vacuums Shalene Valenzuela’s wild ‘domestic art’ fools the eye as well as the mind

Story: Dave Weinstein

CeramiCist shalene Valenzuela’s art often begins not in her studio but out in the real world.

There, she hunts through thrift shops for discarded domestic objects whose forms, connotations, and mysteries suggest something to her about how a past we wish would remain in the past continues to bedevil us to this day.

At first glance Shalene’s art seems humorous, joyous even: scenes of women with ruby red lips, expertly applied eyeliner and plucked eyebrows, hair in short bobs, the occasional bouffant, or with some remarkable bangs.

These women, engaged in evocative doings, decorate the surface of what

appear to be toasters, vacuums, and other tools of the traditional housewife’s trade.

“Shalene is so witty, and her work is so surprising,” says Renee Brown, a Missoula, Montana, ceramicist with a very different style who once shared a studio with Shalene. “It just invites you in, and it surprises you.”

Shalene’s women smile much of the time, suggesting a sort of mid20th century bliss that came from caring for husbands and children.

(The husbands and children are never shown.)

But could Shalene be fooling us about that?

She is certainly fooling us about the objects that she decorates with her mini narratives. All are made of slip cast clay in a mode of art-making dubbed trompe l’oeil (‘fool the eye’), which goes back at least to Zeuxis, in ancient Greece, whose painting of grapes was so realistic, it fooled hungry birds.

“I love the cheeky humor in her art of domestic things,” says Lisa Simon, owner with her husband of Radius Gallery in Missoula, Montana, where Shalene, though California born and bred, has become a leader of the arts scene.

Simon has close to a dozen of Shalene’s works in her home, including one in the form of a nail polish container. Shalene’s ceramic toasters and other household appliances may be simulacra of the real things, but in Simon’s home they function, both visually and imaginatively, as the real things.

“It’s well placed around my home for moments of levity,” Simon says. “The toaster is over by my [real] toaster, and the

nail polish is in the bathroom. One of her rotary dial phones is hanging where a phone would be.”

Sandra Henderson, a Missoula collector, has about 15 of Shalene’s works, some in what Henderson calls “my feminist bathroom,” which began with the first piece she bought by Shalene. Works by other artists are there too.

“With slip casting,” says Henderson, “Shalene made a kind of old-time scale

QUIET COMPOSURE. Shalene Valenzuela (top), known in Missoula for her vintage flair, creates work showing well-coiffed, apparently well-adjusted women from the mid-century. But there is always a mystery. Are these women in violation on Shalene’s ‘MeterMade’ series (left)? Shoes, as in her ‘By Any Stretch of the Imagination II’ (above left), are seen frequently in her work. Her ‘Potholder’ series (above right) uses clay to create a seeming textile.

you would step on, and there would be numbers from zero pounds to about 300 pounds.”

But rather than guilt-trip women about their weight, Shalene’s scale, Henderson says, only gives women two measurements: “Perfect, perfect.”

logs is actually clay, the joke quickly wears off.

Shalene does more than play with one substance substituting for another. Her work trumps not just the eye but the mind.

If Shalene really wanted to fool

Men’-era advertising execs?

“You look at, like, old ‘50s and ‘60s advertisements,” Shalene says, “most models have pretty much the same bodies, all kind of have the same figure, the same style.”

That explains, she says, why her

same exact skin color. I mean, that’s a little alarming, isn’t it?”

Indeed, Shalene’s women appear as if they were formed in a Madison Avenue mold to create the perfect wife, much as Shalene’s clay creations are formed in her hand-built plaster molds.

But what really trumps the mind is how Shalene’s technique of slip cast molding matches the tale her art tells. Could this have something to do with women breaking out of molds as second-wave feminism came to the fore in the 1960s, with its focus on the sins of the patriarchy, women’s entrapment in the home, and with raising women’s consciousness?

“The reason I work with clay relates to the imagery I work with,” she says. “There’s that discovery where people go up to an object thinking that it’s an actual toaster, or phone, or it’s a potholder, and it should be soft. Then there’s that moment of discovery that it isn’t what it initially seemed to be.

“I do that with the imagery as well.

SUGGESTIVE STORIES.

“That really cracks me up,” Henderson says.

“Shalene’s works have a decidedly feminist and a slightly militant look that I adore,” Henderson says, “with figures you would find on a McCall’s [magazine] pattern. I’m 70, and her works show what women looked like, acted like, did their hair like when I was a teenager in the ‘60s and ‘70s.”

There’s a complexity to Shalene’s art that is not seen in all trompe l’oeil ceramics. Often once we understand that, hey, what looks like a stack of

us into thinking her ceramic corsets and potholders were made of fabric, why would she complicate the effect by painting strange narratives on top of them?

Instead, the objects become part of her stories. Her phone series, for example, is about people communicating, whether successfully or not.

And the women that Shalene paints, are they real women as they existed in the mid-century or, as Shalene suggests, satirical images of the perfect woman as created by ‘Mad

art focuses on a narrow range of the feminine form and does not include women of color or of a certain age. Shalene, who says she is “a person who is from part Mexican heritage,” is intrigued in the way the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was “whitewashed” for so long, “how certain immigrants blend in and others stand out” from the general culture, and “the discrimination those [immigrants] face.”

“So my work subtly explores that and, yeah, these women all have the

From afar you’ll see these cookie-cutter women with the same color skin, with the bright-red lipstick, the repetitive, attractive women you’d see in glossy advertisements from like the ‘60s. But when you get closer and start seeing the things going on, the narratives and the interactions, then you make new discoveries about the piece.”

The ads from the mid-century that often serve as inspiration showed “how glamorous and how beautiful and how glossy everything was,” Shalene says. “But, you know, it was a very

Top: Women seem to be dishing the dirt, as Shalene suggests here in ‘Suck it Up: Ears are Burning.’ Above left: Rather than indicating to women they need a diet, Shalene’s version of a kitchen scale suggests only that they are ‘perfect, perfect.’ Above center: Here, a hot dog gets speared in ‘A Toast to Burning Desires: Summer Treats.’ Above right: A blender becomes a clay canvas for skating waitresses and a tumble.

conflicted time for sure.”

Her images, she says, “are like peeling back those layers, and bringing out the seedy underbelly, the complexities of human nature.”

Shalene creates an ambiguous narrative that she says is like “a film still, where you capture a moment, and you’re given certain clues as to what’s going on in the scene. And basically it’s up to the viewer to grab the information and fill in the past and the present and the future of what’s going on to create that story.”

For Ceramics Monthly , fellow ceramicist Mitchell Spain provided

telephone, where the original message becomes distorted or manipulated as it is passed on. The bees are pollinating messages, and the tangled phone cord brings discord into the piece.”

Lisa Simon, who has been showing Shalene’s work at her Radius Gallery for seven or eight years, appreciates the personal expression the artist puts into her ceramics.

“Her women are like models you would see in Woman’s Day [magazine]. Their hair is all made up, they have pearl necklaces, their faces are all made up,” Simon says. “They’re like magazine models, and at the same time they have this cheeky character. There’s an irony about the images.”

Renee Brown says of her friend: “She’s always looking at the world with an opportunistic eye of betterment. That shows in her work. It’s about the evolution of how women have been perceived, versus how women really are.

“It’s how women are seen at first glance, porcelain perfect. But there is a deeper truth. She shines a light on the retro ideal of femininity.”

Shalene’s imagery may be retro, but the thrust of her art is not.

“I’m bringing these characters from the ‘50s or ‘60s, but [the artworks] are commenting on things today as well,” Shalene says, adding, “The attitudes of that time are attitudes that we still carry. They haven’t fully gone away. I mean, if they had, I wouldn’t be making work like this.”

Shalene, who was born in Santa Barbara, studied art at UC Berkeley and got an MFA in 1997 at California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.

Among her instructors at Cal was Richard Shaw, one of the founders of the California Funk school and a master of trompe l’oeil ceramics that tell a story. A recent, humorous yet harrowing series shows seashore detritus arrayed on plates: seashells, bottle caps, dead birds.

“He introduced me to the art of mold making,” Shalene says.

Shalene worked with another legendary clay artist, Viola Frey, who

that she created were…being vulnerable. So she was twisting that narrative of what it means to be male or what it means to be female, just like flipping it.”

Shalene spent the next decade creating art, directing a small gallery in Oakland, and teaching, including at the Richmond Art Center and later the

a close reading of one of her works, ‘For Telephone: Yellow Tangle.’

Spain writes, “Valenzuela highlights communication in both two and three dimensions. The women’s expressions imply gossip being relayed. There is also reference to the game of

Shalene “is curious about what is under their skin, the aesthetics, the idea of femininity.” Brown says. “But what is underneath that? There’s something that wasn’t allowed to be said for so long in society, that is just beneath the skin. Shalene reveals it in a very playful way.”

“Her art is not cynical,” Brown adds.

FOCUS ON CRAFT. “She’s just so meticulous with her craft,” fellow artist Renee Brown says of Shalene (at work, left). “She’ll be working with a brush with three hairs, painting a fine line.” Top right: ‘Cinched In: Compounding.’ Above left: Fire is often a theme in the artist’s work. Above right: A mishap with a blender in her ‘Shaking Things Up’ series.

taught at CCAC, and whose at-times cartoon-like take on women and men proved influential.

“The women that Viola would create,” Shalene points out, “were these tall figures that were very lean but very powerful. And then the businessmen

Oregon College of Art and Craft.

She also attended artists’ residencies, where artists are given a chance to focus on their work in a supportive community. One of these, in 2006 was the Archie Bray Foundation in Helena, one of the ceramics institutions that

has made Montana a go-to place for artists in clay.

Following that, Shalene did two years in residence at the Clay Studio in Missoula. “I started working on

director of the Clay Studio for the past 11 years. Shalene enjoys the role, which is full-time plus, but wishes she had more time to work in her studio.

“Shalene is important with Mon-

openings and talks. It’s meaningful for artists to see her there. She’s one of the key art pillars.”

“ Shalene stands out because she has that kind of California style,”

narratives t hat were a little more complex, and weaving in clues about what was going on,” she says. “That’s when my work took the turn to be what it is today.”

These days Shalene creates ceramics in the garage studio of a home she shares with her husband in Missoula, which is like the Berkeley of Montana. She also has been the executive

tana artists. She has influence,” says art collector Sandra Henderson, who says Shalene does a great job running a complex art center. “She’s created a happy place for artists.”

Lisa Simon says: “Where there is an event, Shalene shows up. She has a very busy life, running the art center, but she makes time for the artists in the comm unity and shows up at

BITE OF THE APPLE. Top left: ‘Weighing In: Measure Up II’ seems to play with ideas about sin and body shaming. Top center: In her ‘Lunch Tray’ series, Shalene deals with feminine stereotypes. Top right: ‘Ironing Things Out: Pencil Pusher’ suggests stereotypical roles for women. Above left to right: Even this hammer is made of clay in ‘An Implement of Self Construction: Masques’ (far left); ‘Beware of Sharp Edges: Spinning Yarn’; Shalene’s telephones can suggest communication or miscommunication; ‘Shaking Things Up: Roller Derby’ (far right).

Simon adds, saying that Shalene is known for bicycling through town and for her striking appearance in vintage mid-century fashion.

But it’s not about flash, her friends say.

“When you’re talking with Shalene,” Renee Brown says, “she looks in your eyes, she’s looking at you, [and hears] not just what you’re saying, but what’s under what you are saying.

“There’s a smile in her eyes. It’s as though she knows a secret that even you don’t know.” ■

• For more on Shalene Valanzuela and her art, visit shalene.com. In California, her work can be viewed at the John Natsoulas Gallery in Davis: natsoulas.com.

Photography: Shalene Valenzuela, Kayla McCormick, Chris Autio

MAGICAL MYSTERY LURE

some fans of ClassiC neon signage are celebrating 2023 as the 100th anniversary of its glowing debut in the United States. Others are not quite ready for merrymaking.

But everyone involved can agree on one thing: It’s hard to resist the visual allure of a grand boulevard lit by the brilliance of neon. Whether it’s a charming sign spelling out C-A-F-E, or a large-scale animated one inviting us to drop some dollars at a Las Vegas casino, neon has a way of electrifying a streetscape row of businesses, making everything come alive.

Looking around California today, so much of its beloved neon signage has vanished over the decades. But the good news is that a surprising number of the state’s neon signs are still burning brightly, or are being restored, and their art form is definitely experiencing a resurgence.

Classic film-noir movies of yesteryear offer a glimpse into how cities looked during neon’s heyday. ‘Hollywood Story,’ for instance, a 1951 noir, opens with the glamour of Hollywood at the height of its neon-bedazzled postwar years—its theatre marquees, restaurants, and studios all aglow at the storied intersection of Hollywood and Vine.

Fast forward 70 years, and today the appreciation and celebration of neon lives on in yet another way, through education and enlightenment—at neon museums, tours, and even a Bay Area neon festival.

Neon signage has been around longer than most of us realize, its intriguing sealed glass tubes filled with gases and energized by a transformer.

A German glassblower named Heinrich Geissler is credited with successfully creating the first ‘word in glass’ back in 1851. During the 1890s, innovators Nikola Tesla and Daniel McFarland Moore experimented with wireless luminous tubing. By 1910, French inventor

G eorges Claude had filed luminoustube patents, and established the company Claude Neon Lights.

For many years, it was believed the first neon sign arrived in the U.S. in 1923. Designed by Claude, the neon billboard spelled out ‘Packard’ in red letters that were four feet high. Its installation at Earle C. Anthony’s Packard automobile showroom at 7th and Flower Streets in Los Angeles reportedly stopped traffic, causing a sensation.

Enter scholar Dydia DeLyser and signmaker Paul Greenstein. Scouring archives and bu ilding permits, the

Top: Famous American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio, offers visitors a chance to experience historic neon signs along Main Street-style streetscapes. Middle left: Twilight Zone storefront neon dons its lowbrow cap in an array of eye-catching advertising. Above: This handsome example suggests seafood is on the menu. Middle right: ‘Ladybird’ and President Lyndon Johnson. Banishing neon signage to the scrap heap was a priority on the First Lady’s beautification program. Right: Neon is no stranger to burlesque shows and ‘triple X’ theaters.

Controversial anniversary, symposiums and walking tours pave the way for the neon sign’s bright future

Story: Adriene Biondo

RESURGENCE.

two researchers concluded that “1923 is a widely spread myth that became exaggerated over time, a total red herring,” explains DeLyser. “I don’t know if Mr. Anthony started the rumor himself. Nobody can answer that,

since they’re all gone.”

In Neon: A Light History, DeLyser’s and Greenstein’s book published in 2021, the authors suggested that an employee of Moore’s actually made the first commercially successful neon-

filled sign 14 years earlier, in 1909, for the Ingersoll Watch Company of Newark, New Jersey.

Because precise early records are scarce, these claims continue to be shrouded in mystery as researchers dig

coast to coast.

But despite neon’s undeniable appeal, cities have sustained significant losses of their signage over the years, with many businesses abandoning neon altogether.

“LEDs are taking over,” says Brian Currie, a Burbank-based glass bender in the neon industry since 1978, who worked on the elaborate Las Vegas set for the 1981 movie ‘One from the He art.’

Currie has seen how his industry has been impacted by the marketing of LED signage as a replacement for neon.

“LED is plastic, not glass, so when it fails, businesses often end up having to buy a whole new sign. And the whole LED sign ends up in landfill,” he says. “LED signs are not recyclable, whereas the glass and metal components of neon signs are.”

Mark Powers, also based in Southern California, has been bending glass since he got out of high school in the late 1960s. Working in every phase of the industry, one of his favorite projects was working on the rooftop Roaring ‘20s sign for Knott’s Berry Farm amusement park in Buena Park.

for more clues. DeLyser and Greenstein also hope to zero in on details of another Packard sign, manufactured in Paris and installed on an Earle C. Anthony dealership in San Francisco that they believe could be from 1923. Perhaps it will be a game changer.

In the meantime, can we please let the celebrating begin?

Hitting its heyday during the postwar years, neon illuminated everything from New York’s Times Square, to corner d ru gstores and ice cream parlors from

“The discouraging thing to me today,” he says, “is that so many different [neon] manufacturers have lost the skills and techniques for making high-quality products that last a long time.

“High-voltage wire has improved tremendously though, and wires don’t short out anymore. But air is the best insulator. When you lay high-voltage wire on top of metal, it’s going to react and make that buzz.”

When it comes to neon in the Bay

CITY LIGHTS. Top: Here in the 1960s, San Francisco’s Market Street was awash in neon. Above left: Ladybird Johnson’s ‘Scrap Old Signs’ program saw sign companies actively remove thousands of neon signs from coast to coast. Above center: Sign worker restoring sign for the Jefferson Hotel, San Francisco, 2019. Above right: Gaspare’s Pizza House in San Francisco going for the glow. Bottom left: French inventor Georges Claude demonstrates neon ‘glow discharge’ tubes in Paris, 1910. Inset: Early example of Claude’s ‘Packard’ sign.

Area, artists and historians Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna are forces to be reckoned with. The authors of San Francisco Neon: Survivors and Lost Icons from 2014, they continue to update their “little book that keeps on rolling,” says Homan, and also undertake numerous other projects in support of neon preservation.

“We’re seeing a real appreciation for old signs,” says Barna. “The design work, craftsmanship—I think people appreciate that, especially once it’s pointed out to them.”

Neon’s glow invites us to study its mysteries. “Neon comes from the stars, and the glow is not unlike the aurora borealis,” shares Homan. “Particles get energized with electricity, and the process hasn’t changed since its invention. The ‘negative particles’ are trying to get to the positive electrode at one end of the tube, and the ‘positive particles’ are trying to get to the negative electrode at the other end. It’s kind of alive!”

“And there are no filaments or material creating the light,” Barna points out. “It’s the electrified atoms that illuminate the tube.”

Thinki ng back to what led businesses to abandon neon signage, Barna says, “The starting point would be when neon was associated with urban blight in the mid-‘60s into the ‘70s. ‘Ladybird’ Johnson [wife of President Lyndon Johnson] had a lot to do with neon being removed, and many sign companies were happy to take part in [her so-called beautification campaign], the Scrap Old Signs project, and used it for their promotional materials.”

“Before the ‘70s, along [San Francisco’s] Market Street, when they dug the trench for the BART [public transportation] system, removing neon signs became a city mandate,” says Barna, explaining that within one year the city oversaw the removal of neon signs from the most densely populated neon district, where there once had been 19 neon-lit movie theatres over a few blocks.

Back when those movie theaters were young, neon was seen in a completely different light. “Just like the automobile, neon represented a night on the town,” Homan says. “It was fashionable, elegant, alluring… but then neon became the classic guy down on his luck, the neon sign signaling doom outside his window.”

By the 1970s, neon had reached

the end of its heyday, with cheap plastic signs taking their place. “It’s not really surprising that the sign industry destroyed its own heritage,” adds DeLyser. “Everybody all across the country was turning everything into a parking lot, a freeway, an interstate.”

But the future of neon remains hopeful. Today, neon is being viewed as both a business enhancer and an art form. Barna reports that many of his designer friends have been installing neon signage in the lobbies of tech company offices, and other businesses are coming up with imaginative sign ideas.

“Just yesterday I got a haircut at a barber shop that has two neon signs,” he says. “They’re cropped off on the top to give the impression of a flat-top [haircut]. The owner said that the way he had the signs done improved business.”

Barna has also been finding that more and more neon artists are now sharing information. “People aren’t as competitive and secretive as they used to be, and that helps foster the craft,” he says.

However, staunch defenders of neon,

With the help of key supporters, Barna and Homan have succeeded in creating a sign ordinance in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, an area that still has a high density of historic signs and architecture.

They’re also associated with SF Shines, a storefront improvement program that benefits small businesses.

“We’re the only designers on contract with a grant to design new neon signs, and we can make recommendations as to which sign companies can make the signs,” says Barna.

“The thing we’re proud of is that city planners actually asked us to develop

The next time you look up at a neon sign, consider this. “Neon is still being used to draw people together,” says Dydia DeLyser. “It’s still cutting edge, and it’s still a beacon for business. Business cards are going extinct, but neon is not.” ■

like Barna and Homan, have seen many of the Bay Area’s neon signs replaced with the harsh, one-directional quality of LED lighting.

“LED manufacturers got hip to the fact that if you call it neon, you can sell it better,” says Barna. “[It’s] kind of a big misinformation campaign.”

“There’s no program in San Francisco for LEDs, because they’re not recyclable,” he explains. “With neon, the cabinet, glass, and copper wiring are recyclable and valuable.”

“We actually did a neon presentation at the local Herman Miller [furnishings] showroom, only to find out after the event that it was sponsored by a company that manufacturers LEDs,” adds Homan.

neon sign design guidelines,” adds Homan. “That was voted on by the Board of Supervisors.”

If all of this is not enough to keep the couple busy, Barna and Homan are also the producers of Neon Speaks, an international festival, now in its eighth year, focused on the history and future of neon as an art form.

They also lead walking tours of San Francisco neon, and have been working with the city’s supervisors to develop a special sign district in the North Beach and Chinatown neighborhoods.

“Our goal is to make this tangible,” says Homan, “and to create a space for people who love old things like neon art and neon signs.”

• To experience the magic of neon in person, plan a visit to these neon-centric specialty programs and museums: Neon Speaks, San Francisco (neonspeaks.org); Tenderloin Museum, San Francisco (tenderloinmuseum.org); Museum of Neon Art, Glendale (neonmona.org); Neon Sign Museum, Las Vegas (neonmuseum. org); American Sign Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio (americansignmuseum.org)

Photography: Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna, Heather David, Thomas Hawk, Charles Chapman, Mark Carrodus, Forest Casey, Museum of Neon Art

SF SHINES. Top left: The magnificent three-dimensional lantern sign for the Li Po Cocktail Lounge in San Francisco’s ‘Chinatown’ is shown during restoration. Top right: After restoration is complete, Li Po is ready to be admired by a whole new generation of neon aficionados. Above left: Unique signage for Tad’s Broiled Steaks combines neon with flicker bulbs, another reason to visit S.F.’s Powell Street. Above center: La Victoria Bakery on 24th Street sporting a very vintage font. Above right: Historic Tommy’s Joynt on S.F.’s Van Ness Avenue. Right: Neon portraits of dedicated historians Randall Ann Homan and Al Barna of sfneon.org.

Are Eichler’s surviving radiant heat systems destined to be ‘goners’?

to 75-year mark, are they beginning to ‘age-out’? Do seven decades of use go beyond a system’s expected lifetime?

“I think the longevity of Eichler radiant systems is going to continue

that lead to abandoning systems are rare for us.”

Today, thanks to their current condition and modern repair techniques, most copper pipes that leak

In Joe Eichler’s building timeline, from 1950 on, his earliest homes featured radiant heat with copper piping, but in the midst of a copper shortage during the Korean War, by

Joint of no return

a beloved part of the mid-century Eichler lifestyle, Joe Eichler’s original radiant heating system has long been one of the most pleasurable creature comforts inherent in owning one of his homes.

Eichler residents have been known to invite guests inside to take off their shoes and experience firsthand the wonders of radiant heat.

Who can blame them? This enjoyable, toasty feature is worthy of bragging rights. After all, what other kind of house lets us step barefoot from the shower onto an evenly warmed bathroom floor?

But Eichler’s surviving original radiant heating systems are facing a major crossroads today. Though many are alive and operating trouble-free— or have been revived with successful repairs, system additives, and new boilers—others are on the edge, having become both “a blessing and a curse,” as the saying goes.

To develop a practical approach to preserving these original systems, while at the same time considering the current challenges and complex realities surrounding them, we invited six Bay Area Eichler Network radiant heating and leak detection experts to join us for a deep dive.

We wondered: As these mid-20th century radiant survivors hit the 50-

concept into their marketing strategy to prospective owners going back to the early 1950s. Above, two period marketing tools play up radiant heat. Left: For the Eichler residents on the cover of this Eichler Homes brochure, radiant heat is so pleasurable “we practically live on the floor.” Right: This photo by Ernie Braun from the 1950s reinforces the same theme.

for a long time,” says an optimistic Mike LaChance of LaChance’s Radiant Heating, who has been servicing the Peninsula and in the South Bay for 20 years. “Catastrophic failures

are repairable. But, as even LaChance would agree, if your tubing is steel, the first sign of a leak could forecast the eventual end of your system’s useful life.

late 1951 he switched to steel and continued for several years.

In the late 1950s, Eichler began to transition back to copper, leaving behind several thousand steel systems

Story: Adriene Biondo

TOASTY COMFORT. Many Eichler owners rate radiant heat as one of the top joys of living in an Eichler. Eichler Homes incorporated the

with uncertain futures and a trail of corrosion and litigation.

INVESTIGATION BEGINS

Knowing whether an Eichler owner’s piping is comprised of copper or steel is a key piece of information in troubleshooting leaking systems.

To determine that, Jim Lehmann of Lehmann Radiant Heating, who heads up the family-owned company that has been serving Marin County since 1945, recommends looking for the system’s ‘manifold,’ which is a hub that distributes hot supply water from the boiler through the system’s pipeline. It is commonly located near the boiler,

and usually in the laundry room, garage, or hallway.

“Different manifolds were used on copper and steel [systems],” says Lehmann, who suggests that, to identify copper piping today, homeowners should look for copper-colored exposed pipes at the base of the manifold, and greencolored ones for steel. In his service area, LaChance has also found gray- and aluminum-colored steel piping.

Lance Eastman, owner of Bay Area Plumbing & Heating on the Peninsula and South Bay, takes this probe one step further. “If a magnet sticks to the [metal of the] manifold, you’ll know it’s steel—and we won’t even go out [to make a repair]. With multiple [steel] repairs, as soon as you drive away, it starts leaking again.”

But how can homeowners determine that they have a leak? Symptoms can range from higher-than-normal water bills, cracks in flooring or nearby walls, a hot spot on the floor, the sound of

running water when all the water in the home is turned off, and puddles and mildew under carpets.

Another telltale sign is the appearance of a powdery efflorescence, usually white in color, on the exterior of the home, along the base of the foundation.

CAUSES OF RADIANT LEAKS

To zero in on the causes of leaking radiant systems, we reached out to Christian Macaulay of American Leak Detection, whose company services the entire Bay Area. He pinpoints three main causes of leaking radiant pipes.

“One is corrosion,” he says. “In copper, this happens due to electrolysis, when a copper line has been in contact with the wire mesh or rebar in the slab. Or just corrosion due to wear and tear often observed in steel pipe systems.

“Two, the slab cracks and shears the pipes. And three, the pipeline is damaged by a third party, such as drilling holes in the slab.”

Ste el system leaks commonly occur due to the pipes’ improper height at installation (which has been known to even extend outside the slab), their eroded terne coating, and ultimately corrosion that continues to eat away at the pipeline.

Denis Roman of Hydrotech Radiant Heating, covering the Marin and San Francisco areas for nearly two decades, also suspects undetected leaks as culprits. Based on his experience, some Eichlers leak inside the slab without owners ever realizing it.

“A lot of the time,” he says, “they find out [leaks for the first time] when they are in the middle of a re-do of the floors or a big remodel.” In these cases, the water simply has been draining out underneath the slab.

At the X-100 steel Eichler, in the San Mateo Highlands, a costly $900 monthly water bill was the only tip-off that something was going on under the tile flooring.

“It wasn’t a radiant heat leak, but similar—an interior garden one,” says owner Marty Arbunich, CA-Modern publisher. “Everything seemed normal, except for the unusually high water bill. It was a small leak, but out of sight, and it went on and on nonstop.

TELLTALE SIGNS. Common signs that a leak has occurred in an Eichler radiant heat system are higher-than-normal water bills, cracks in flooring or nearby walls, a hot spot on the floor, the sound of running water when all the water in the home is turned off, and puddles and mildew under carpets. Above: This horizontal strip of photographs presents four different incidents of leaking radiant heat showing up on Eichler floors. Top: Two photos from Eichler Homes’ early days: a busy Eichler crew installs steel radiant tubing prior to pouring the slab (left), Joe Eichler on the job with one of his crew (center). Top right: Mike LaChance of LaChance’s Radiant Heating stands alongside a radiant heat manifold. Left: LaChance repairman reaches into a recently jackhammered Eichler slab while making a repair (far left); damaged copper piping is exposed and ready for the repair to be completed (near left).

Eventually American Leak Detection came to the rescue.”

POINT OF NO RETURN

One of the most complex issues in radiant heating repair is determining when a system has finally reached the point of no return.

“I do n ot think we know what the expected lifetime is for these systems,” says Paul Gerrard, who operates Big Blue Hydronics in the East Bay. “I learned plumbing in the UK, and worked on systems from the Victorian ages, over 100 years old. Eichler [systems] should last longer than that, surely.”

Eastman looks to geology for answers, land settling over time, and such, and points out that Eichler’s original concrete slabs, at least in his service area, did not have reinforcement—“no rebar, only wire.”

Having a leak is a serious situation —because leaks can undermine the integrity of pipes, the concrete slab, and other system components.

“Some tracts hardly ever get leaks, while others get tons,” Eastman adds, citing situations that were so bad that homeowners took out their entire slab, repoured a new one after adding rebar, and installed a whole new heating system—an expensive proposition.

Considering that the more fragile systems were made of steel, and that copper systems historically have greater longevity, we asked how much repair is practical, and even possible, for each system.

Gerrard says there’s no easy answer.

“I often tell the story of one client, for whom we repaired seven copper leaks in a year on their Eichler in Castro Valley. That was 2014, and the system has been fully functioning, leak-free since then,” he says. “Yet, at another home, where they repaired a leak, another came up a week later, and the client threw in the towel.”

LEAK DETECTION PROCESS

With all this talk of leaks, what can a homeowner do to begin their investigation and get a handle on a suspected leak?

“The process is to isolate the leaking line,” explains leak detection expert Macaulay about his approach. “Once isolated, tracer gas is induced into the line. When the tracer gas reaches the leak, the leak is located by using sonic

equipment, usually getting within inches of the leak.”

The three most common leak detection devices tied to radiant heat are the ultrasonic listening device, the helium molecular analyzer, and thermal imaging.

“We first listen and confirm the leak location sonically,” says Macaulay. “But sometimes leaks don’t generate sound, and at that point

request that the homeowner follow up with a leak location company like America n Leak.

REPAIR GETS UNDERWAY

Once the leak location has been identified, the repair can begin.

“At that point, the flooring is

oxygen, it creates a crust on the outside of t he pipe.”

After the repair is complete, Gerrard recommends a system flush and cleanse as a proactive maintenance step, and the introduction of a sediment inhibi tor.

LaChance adds a point of caution

we try to ‘sniff’ out the leaks” [with the analyzer].” The thermal imaging camera, he adds, “is good for mapping out radiant heat lines, but is limited in its effectiveness in locating leaks.”

According to Macaulay, normal leak detection usually costs in the neighborhood of $500.

“Our leak detection process is limited to finding the most prevalent leak in a system,” he says. “Therefore, after repairs are performed, the system is retested for leaks. Approximately ten percent of the time there may be a secondary leak in the system.”

Macaulay also notes that, for one particular home with a copper system leak, “we chased up to as many as ten leaks to save the system. Of course, we would have deemed it a waste of time and money to chase so many leaks on a steel system.”

When dealing with suspected leaks, Mike LaChance and his company pressure test the system, and if they find abnormalities, they typically

removed,” says Mike LaChance. “Once we jackhammer a 12-inch by 12-inch hole, we cut one section of pipe, pull out the bad pipe, put in the new copper pipe, silver braze the connection—more like welding than soldering—pressure test the system, and cover it back up with sand and cement.”

LaChance’s standard cost for repair runs from $1,200 for one leak, and up. “Sometimes it takes us three hours, sometimes a whole day,” he says.

For very small leaks, LaChance sometimes uses a stop-leak additive that’s not harmful to pipes. “It coats the inside of the pipe like a silicone,” he says, “and when it hits outside

for this step. “Some unlicensed installers do not add a regulator [device] while doing their work,” he says. “This winds up putting too much pressure on the radiant pipes, which can cause the system to over-pressurize and introduce leaks.

“The regulator is an important

LIFE ON THE FLOOR. Above right: This Eichler Network archive photo from a decade ago shows the Schick family of Walnut Creek father Robin, and sons Ethan and Isaac having fun atop the slab, in part thanks to radiant heat. Above left: Thermal imaging camera maps out the radiant lines below the floor. Near right: American Leak Detection’s Christian Macaulay with an ultrasonic listening device. Far right: Troubleshooter using a helium molecular analyzer.

On the Homefront

Feel for felt

Artist’s village of tiny MCM houses of fabric racks up miles of smiles at showing Linda Santiman enjoys humming a happy tune whenever she’s working on her art. And on Facebook, the Los Angeles-based fiber artist featured a cute music video humming in harmony with her.

There, a purple ‘50s Cadillac constructed of felt fiber cruises past a charming village of miniature mid-century modern houses, also made of felt.

“When I made the video, I wanted it to have a song from that era, so I decided to hum ‘It’s a Good Day’ by Peggy Lee,” Santiman says. “The right music gives it more of a Palm Springs vibe, too.”

Santiman was definitely celebrating “a good day” following the summer showing of ‘Modville,’ an art show collaboration featuring her felt creations and the photography of Deb Smith hosted by The Bag art gallery in Silverlake.

“The opening was amazing!” says Santiman. “Over a hundred people came. Everyone was in a great mood, and people loved the combination of putting felt houses and the photography together.”

The artistic collaboration offers a bit of education too. “You see Deb’s beautiful photo of a house designed by [architect] Donald Wexler, and right beside it is my interpretation,” Santiman says.

While not literal architectural models, Santiman’s felt houses remain unique artistic interpretations. “When viewed side-byside, the 2-D and the 3-D [versions] bring even more of an appreciation,” she says. “People love the dynamics, and the whimsical houses seem to bring a joyfulness, a multi-media love of arch itecture.”

Recalling the first time that

she saw miniature holiday houses made of gingerbread depicted as modern architectural homes—of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House, for example—she says, “I remember loving those before I ever made felt houses!”

Santiman’s concept of building miniature felt houses began more than two years ago, she recalls. “Here we were, my wife and I, in the part of the pandemic where we’re all stuck and can’t go anywhere.”

Having made mid-century

experimenting by making them larger, more elaborate, and exploring different shapes.

“I found it so meditative and calming, especially during a scary time like the pandemic,” she says, adding that she made at least 80 percent of the felt houses during Zoom meetings while working for a nonprofit.

To create the houses, Santiman uses sheets of colored felt and embroidery thread, and fi lls the inside with Poly-Fil, the kind used in stuffed animals. Breeze

been this history of making whimsical craft-meets-art. Otherwise, I’m more into the performing arts. I co-

Christmas villages from the kinds of kits you find on Etsy, Santiman thought about the houses being made of paper, and realized they wouldn’t last.

So, she decided to try her hand at making the houses out of felt,

block walls are fashioned from croch et lace.

“I’m like a kid in a candy shop when I go out to buy the felt,” she says, explaining that there’s a malleability about felt material that makes it workable. Flat sheets lend themselves to architecture and walls, softer sheets for curves. Stiffer felt is used for walls. No wires are needed to shape or hold walls up.

A licensed marriage and family therapist based in Beverly Hills, Santiman is also a classically trained opera singer who has worked in the Los Angeles area since 2006. As for her role in building felt villages, Santiman says, it’s all been on “a hobby level.”

“I love to sew,” she adds, “and it’s

write, produce, and perform in gay cabaret shows, where I’m being silly and funny, and whatever.”

With contagious enthusiasm, Santiman points out, “I was excited about me and Deb getting to do this show. It was meant for us to come together, in an expression and a collaborative-ness that feels really good.”

The ‘Modville’ show marks the first time Santiman has shown in a gallery. “Now we’re spoiled. Where will we go next?” she says. “Everybody’s saying we have to take the show on the road.” Check Santiman’s Instagram page (@lindafeltvillage) for announcements.

–Adriene Biondo

Photography: courtesy Deb Smith and the ‘Modville’ exhibition

COLLABORATION. Above: Here are examples of Los Angeles-based fiber artist Linda Santiman’s whimsical felt art from ‘Modville,’ an art show collaboration featuring her felt creations and the photography of Deb Smith. Top left: Linda Santiman with one of her felt friends. Middle, bottom left: Linda’s felt art (top) meets Deb’s photography (bottom).

Real-gone platters

From dance crazes, to sex, to religion Designed for Dancing feasts on countless covers of long-lost kooky record albums

C an you sin G the ‘let’s go to the hop’ chorus from Danny & the Juniors’ ‘At the Hop’? If you were a kid in the U.S.A. during the mid20th century, you probably can.

But can you do the ‘Bop,’ the dance that came with it? No? Then you must have missed Ray Conniff’s 1957 album Dance the Bop! , which included an eight-page instructional brochure—written, the liner notes claim, by a real feline ‘cool cat.’

The authors of Designed for Dancing are academics, and the book has 49 pages of footnotes. More importantly, the authors have been record collectors for decades who see noth-

Designed for Dancing: How Midcentury Records Taught America

Dance

We learn about religion: How the limbo began in Trinidad at funerary rituals in which the deceased transitioned to a new plane. “The movement under the bar,” they write, “enacted a suspension between two worlds.”

just plain make a living in a hardboiled competitive field.

About swing band leader Boyd Raeburn’s Dance Spectacular , from 1956, they write: “The cover… provides an iconic window into the aspirations of countless jazz musicians of the time to hold onto young listeners as rock and roll reared its unruly head.”

The book even delves into such sensitive questions as, ‘What is it about polka records and women’s underwear?’

The authors, who have also written Hi-Fi Living: the Vinyl LP in Midcentury America , seem particularly fond of crossover dance records, because of their oddity and freewheeling ways. The album Square Dance With Soul , by the Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, for example, or Hula Hoop Polka

This isn’t a book to read in one quick swoop. Keep it alongside your turntable. And heed its unspoken warning: stay out of thrift stores!

ing more sorrowful than forlorn record platters no one wants.

“Polka records, alas, languish in basement boxes, thrift shops, and record store bargain bins,” they write. But they don’t linger long when Borgerson and Schroeder pass through. Every album and EP shown in this book is from their collection.

This book is about many things, but how records taught Americans to dance is not central among them. We see hundreds of album covers, many full page and wonderful. Each is accompanied by a close reading, delving into typography, photography, who the photographer was, his or her predilections; and the same for the cover designer.

We learn about how Americans of the era yearned for excitement in their lives, and a bit more sex.

Liner notes for the 1972 album How to Make Your Husband a Sultan promised to “transform the stale, white-bread dullness of your ‘after hours’ marriage into an international world brimming with tantalizing temptation, rhythmic finger cymbals, and salty body gyrations.”

And yes, the ‘Sultan’ album even included an instructional booklet, so this was no mere promise.

We learn that before mastering kung fu, martial artist Bruce Lee was crowned Hong Kong’s ‘cha-cha-cha’ champion in 1958.

There is much about musicians striving to keep au courant, and to

Midcentury Modern Style: An Approachable Guide to Inspired Rooms

Like a surprising number of Eichler owners, Karen Nepacena has managed to turn her appreciation of her home’s style into a life’s work.

She runs an interior design firm and travels the country bringing mid-century modern style to, well, anybody.

“Whether you live in an apartment, condo, loft, modern house, midcentury modern house, or something in between, there are many wonderful aspects of mid-century design that can be brought into any space,” she writes.

This is a book of real charm and informality, aimed at the neophyte, including one concerned about the budget. “I like to mix things up,” Nepacena writes, adding, “I’ve mixed different designs, from molded plastic chairs to leather-and-wood chairs to upholstered chairs, all around the same dining table.”

Dibble’s photos are superb, clearly illustrating Nepacena’s points. We see dogs in the photos but, despite the author’s focus on people living in these rooms, no people. Many of the homes are Eichlers.

She also loves wooden paneling and teak furnishings. “These warm colors,” she writes, “really help define a room and envelop it in rich color and texture.”

By Karen Nepacena - photographs by Christopher Dibble. 216 pages. Hardbound. Gibbs Smith.

to

By Janet Borgerson and Jonathan Schroeder. 540 pages. Hardcover. MIT Press.

BARGAIN BIN DIGS. Designed for Dancing is filled with hundreds of album covers, and delves into the typography, photographers, designers, and more behind many of them. Far left: One of the kooky ones: Music to Break a Lease!

Glamour Road: Color, Fashion, Style and the Midcentury Automobile By Jeff

Stork and Tom Dolle. 256 pages. Hardcover. Schiffer Publishing.

Could mid-century designers have too much fun with cars? For certain. Just recall the fetish for outlandish fins that hit at the end of the 1950s.

But go back a decade to cars by Kaiser Frazer. Full-page magazine ads show chrome-grilled wonders alongside equally appealing women, in apparel by such couturiers as Pauline Trigère and Valentina.

The authors, with backgrounds in the auto industry and design, do a great job—mostly through their illustrations— relating ‘50s and ‘60s cars to both fashion and mid-century modern homes.

A 1952 ad for a Lincoln brags of its “new glass-wall visibility,” and says the cars are “beautiful, functional, like today’s new homes.”

Cool ads show how carmakers of the era sought to appeal to the ladies through colors and interiors, some created by women designers, including General Motors’ ‘Damsels of Design.’ One 1956 model, the La Femme by Dodge, “came complete with raincoat, umbrella, and pink leather purse among its accouterments.”

Speaking of the 1967 Buick Electra 225 coupe, supermodel Suzy Parker summed it up: “A woman should think of her car as a personal accessory, like jewelry.”

“Keep your villains suave and clever,” legendary movie director Alfred Hitchcock once advised. For his classic road-movie macabre comedy North by Northwest, that meant elegant James Mason as the cold-hearted heel.

And it meant the mid-century modern Vandamm House atop Mount Rushmore in South Dakota for the heel’s residence, a home created by production designer Robert Boyle, an architect who collaborated with Hitchcock on many films.

Author Christine French, an architectural historian and preservationist, ranges widely in this erudite volume that seeks to reveal how filmmakers and production designers succeeded in “elevating the buildings into dominant and sentient characters.”

She’s serious about this, even giving full biographies of real-life buildings shown in Hitchcock films, from their birth in the minds of architects to their subsequent careers post-Hitchcock.

About Boyle’s villain’s house for North by Northwest, she observes, “The Vandamm House by itself is now a movie star, with its own dedicated legion of fans,” and several social media accounts and websites.

This book is chock-a-block, focusing on production designers and the development of that profession, explaining why James Bond villains live in modern houses, and much more.

and-a-half decades.

Baker, who died at age 59 in a fall tied to a lifetime of heroin use, sounds fine here, as do his accompanists, on both standards (‘Blue Room,’ Wayne Shorter’s ‘Beautiful Black Eyes’) and the occasional original.

Particularly appealing is ‘Old Devil Moon,’ with Baker’s solo filled with hope and yearning behind a fast-paced walking bass that keeps the groove going for the length of the song. There are similar delights throughout.

As the CD booklet notes, 1979 was a good year for Baker and for his fans today, with more than ten recordings issued that year, and more live recordings later. However, Blue Room is not a set only for Baker completists.

wife, Dorothy Collins, and touches of gospel. Some cuts go backstage, letting us overhear Scott urging his band to do just one more (umpteenth) take.

And every song is about a minute, or less.

About writing jingles, Scott said: “You must say it simply and with feeling. I don’t feel writing jingles is cheapening. We’re proud to be writing jingles. ”

It’s not surprising that Baker, with his pretty-boy looks, smooth tone, easyswinging phrasing, and a crooner besides, proved to be one of the most popular jazz trumpeters of the ‘50s and ‘60s. For decades fans have sought out his music, putting onto disc nearly every note Baker ever recorded. That’s why this set is a miracle: a pristine recording for a Dutch radio station that lay hidden away for four-

Pianist and electronics inventor Scott (1908-1994) led jazz combos and a big band that were integrated long before the practice was common, with Black luminaries, including saxophonist Ben Webster and drummer Cozy Cole. They played such Scott-penned numbers as ‘Square Dance for Eight Mummies.’

Scott led a radio orchestra, and ran the portentously named Manhattan Research, Inc. to develop and record music on electronic instruments.

And, for more than a decade, he composed and produced what this set calls “midcentury musical miniatures,” TV and radio jingles for such brands as Hamm’s beer and Greyhound Lines.

Scott devised the unforgettable ‘Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us’ theme—featuring trombone, harp, electronics, and a boy whistling.

This is a fun collection, filled with great jazz, much on vibes and marimba, bright singing by Scott’s

The year 1953 was a terrifying time for children, at least for those among them who attended movie-theater matinees.

That year, Robot Monster sent an alien gorilla to earth in a flying saucer; and the great art director and occasional director William Cameron Menzies did even better with Invaders from Mars, the now-classic tale of paranoia.

In the latter, a young boy tries to convince unbelieving adults that the minds of his own mom and dad, and the police chief besides, have been taken over by aliens from a spaceship that landed in his backyard.

The movie rang true to life. This was, after all, a year after UFOs over the nation’s capital frightened the nation. People remained on edge about menaces from space.

This carefully restored print delivers the goods: all-American smalltown characters in well-thought-out, color-coordinated sets that borrow from German Expressionism. The aliens are both strange and appropriately goofy.

Best, perhaps, is that rather than featuring a frightened maiden menaced by monsters, we have a strong character, in physician Pat Blake (played by Helena Carter), who emerges with youngster Jimmy Hunter (David Maclean) as the real heroes of this tale.

Raymond Scott: The Jingle Workshop Two CDs. 24-page booklet. Modern Harmonic.

Chet Baker: Blue Room - The 1979 Vara Studio Sessions in Holland Two CDs. 24-page booklet. Elemental Music.

Invaders from Mars DVD. 73 minutes (plus much bonus footage, including an ‘alternate ending’). Ignite Films.

The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock By Christine Madrid French. 238 pages. Paperback. University of Virginia Press.

The CA Modernist

Thousands of beads give rise to ‘living art’

Palo Alto Eichler owner creates unique series of shining, comforting work

It began for Virginia Gutiérrez Porter as a one-time thing. The Covid pandemic was newly upon us, friends and neighbors in her Palo Alto Eichler neighborhood were suddenly distant. Porter, who’d grown up in Mexico City, surrounded by the warmth of a multigenerational family and friends, was distressed.

“It was a transitional part in my life in general,” says Porter, a graphic designer who was divorced and sharing her two sons with her ex. “Even going to grocery store, it was ghostly.” She adds: “Everything stopped.”

“I needed to have my mind healthy and really occupied, doing something,” she says.

So she turned to materials she had at home: canvasses, beads left over from an earlier project, silicon glue.

She began working in the garage of her home in Palo Alto’s Triple El neighborhood, meticulously arranging lines of beads in a rectangle-withinrectangle design, inspired by Bauhaus mater Josef Albers but with some inspiration of her own.

Rather than just paint, Porter created her lines using beads. “They’re alive,” she says. “When the night comes, they shine differently. They shift depending on how light hits them.”

What began as a plan to create a single work of art for her own home, however, soon became a series of works, dubbed ‘20 Thousand Beads,’ about 15 so far, that she has sold to friends and others, and resulted in an exhibit at a friend’s home.

About the first in the series, which indeed used 20,000 beads, she says: “I actually wanted some color with high-frequency energy. So I thought, yellow and green. They have beautiful energy.” She adds: “It’s a happy, shiny piece.”

Porter acknowledges her debt to

Albers, and says the aesthetic of her 1955 Eichler home was also an infl uence.

“I love Bauhaus. I’m a graphic designer. I love simple lines, straight lines. When I was thinking about making a piece for my house, it had to be coherent with the archi-

to be there to make a straight line, horizontal and vertical. So it was very grounding, and a very mindful process for myself,” she says.

Because she kept her garage door open, the process was also social.

“I spent hours and hours in my garage listening to audio books and watching people walking. Because I needed to see people. From being human, but also from being a Mexican, I need warm, I need touch, and I was lacking it. So it was a wonderful way to say hello to people every day.”

It was also during the pandemic that Porter inaugurated what looks likely to be a tradition—creating a ‘Day of the Dead’ display in her open

street, Veronique Lafargue, has one of Porter’s bead designs in her home and finds it comforting, at a time when she has suffered a loss.

“It’s a place in my house where the sun is constantly changing morning to evening,” Veronique says. “It is like living art. It is comforting. When I work from home, I have it in my background. So when I Zoom, it’s there. And I have a rowing machine, and I watch it [while rowing]. Art is very healing, and it’s joyful.”

Virginia Gutiérrez Porter is also working on a new series, using glitter, and envisions yet another series, one that will use sawdust.

–Dave Weinstein

tecture of Eichlers.”

“And I wanted something that would be interactive, so I chose the beads, because depending on where you are standing, and if the lights are on and off, your perspective changes.”

The process of creating the work is as important as the final product. Porter, whose house is at all times super orderly, says it is “a very meditative process.”

Carefully lining up each of the thousand beads she uses for each canvas (smaller works might have only 5,000) takes time and attention.

“I go one by one, so your attention is right here right now. The first one I didn’t do with a ruler so I really had

garage. Her mother flew up from Mexico City to enjoy it. “It’s a beautiful way to celebrate life,” Porter says.

Porter, who was raised in Mexico City and studied graphic design there, moved to the Palo Alto in 2004 when she got married. She has lived in her Eichler for five years.

She emphasizes how her Mexican heritage has made her who she is as a person and a designer. “I was born surrounded by family, a big family, surrounded by friends,” she says. And the community in the Eichler Triple El neighborhood (named for its streets, El Cajon Way, Elsinore Drive, and Elsinore Court) provides some of that same community feeling.

A close friend from across the

• For more on Virginia Gutiérrez Porter and her art (which she sells, and does commissions), visit the account under her name on Instagram, where she can also be messaged

Photography: Dave Weinstein; and courtesy the artist

• For the latest ‘CA Modernist’ blog stories, visit EichlerNetwork.com/blogs

BEAUTIFUL ENERGY. Top: Placing beads on canvas, as Virginia Gutiérrez Porter does in this photo, is meticulous work requiring much focus. Above right: Virginia’s workspace inside her Eichler can be seen from the sidewalk as her neighbors walk by. Above left: Artist at work. Right: Each of Virginia’s ‘20 Thousand Beads’ images (like this one) evokes a different mode, from light to somber. The mood also changes with lighting conditions throughout the day.

Dining delights

By Adriene Biondo

dinnerware loves to be noticed. In fact, it’s meant to be.

Anytime a beautiful table is set, it isn’t long before guests are complimenting colors, or noticing the feel of a well-designed cup and saucer the moment coffee is served.

Since dinnerware is all about holding and serving food, it needs to be as functional as it is stylish. Dinner plates, dessert plates, cups, saucers, and serving platters all serve a specific function; and the same goes for spoons, forks, and knives, all known as cutlery.

Purchasing complete sets is one way to establish your individual style, and can be a convenient way of purchasing most of what you’ll need at one time. This also helps avoid the risk of discontinued designs.

Dinnerware is available in a wide range of styles, colors, textures, and materials. Choose from solids, stripes, or whatever captures your fancy. When it comes to setting an attractive tablescape, you’ll find a wonderful array of patterns and prices to choose from.

Another option is to build your own collection, and customize your look with specific pieces along the way. Collecting patterns can be great fun, with endless opportunities to rediscover popular classics, and mid-century vintage patterns on online sites like eBay and Etsy.

Today, it’s easy to mix and match, introducing contrasting colors and complementary patterns. Have fun creating a unique ambience that’s all yours.

It doesn’t have to be a holiday to bring out your favorite dinnerware; personal style is welcome every day!

From breakfast to dinner settings, to outdoor barbeque-ware, we hope you enjoy these handpicked dinnerware delights—unique and eye-catching complements for mid-century modern dining and kitchen tables.

Confetti pattern dinnerware takes the cake with its pastel pink primrose color! The 12-piece ‘Spring’ collection is made of durable, recycled melamine. 100 percent BPA-free. Top rack dishwasher safe. Contains four dinner plates, four salad plates, and four individual bowls. For indoor or outdoor use. Available in five colors. $52. amazon.com

Set a happy tone to your dining table with this set of vintage-inspired ‘Mod Flowers’ plates from Holistic Habitat. Plates are dishwasher-friendly, microwave safe, and food safe. Hand-painted stoneware, so no two plates are the same. Imported. Set of four plates (5.5 inches). $40. holistichabitatclt.com

Whether it’s contemporary, retro or mixed and matched, appealing dinnerware can make every meal special

1 Confetti

2 Flowers

3 Fable

Here’s a cool-looking line of bamboo dinnerware to mix or match to your heart’s content. Eco-friendly, each piece is crafted from sustainable bamboo fiber, non-GMO corn starch, and a touch of BPA-free melamine for durability. Offered in eight rainbow hues. Available singly or in larger sets. Four-piece set $38. food52.com

4 Stripe

Do a bit of time travel with this ‘70s-inspired orange and cream striped dinnerware designed by Miranda Lambert. Constructed of porcelain with a pleasant mix of vintage inspiration and

nostalgia that is sure to add style and charm to any table setting. 12-piece set $69. walmart.com

5 Raina

Introducing Raina, sleek, speckled porcelain dinnerware from Dansk. Since the 1950s, Dansk has produced kitchen staples with

retro-inspired shapes and Scandinavian materials. Available in three- or four-piece sets, to mix n’ match with pasta and soup bowls. Mugs available too. Choose from three rustic hues. 100-percent dishwasher safe. Food52.com

6 Dreams

Let your dreams be ‘Terracotta Dreams’ with this unique boho design. Known for its indestructibility, Corelle Vitrelle glass is a shatterproof, triple-layered glass crafted in Corning, N.Y. since 1970. The material is safe for dishwashers, microwaves, freezers, and preheated oven temps to 350F. 18-piece set $99. amazon.com

9 Siterra

Subtle blues, grays, and soft white distinguish this heavy-duty, chipresistant, stoneware set from Sango. Designed in New York City, a fresh sprinkling of speckles adds a tactile touch with ridge details to each piece. Microwave and dishwasher safe. Matching mugs available separately. 16-piece set $66. walmart.com

10 Hygge

Innovative Nordic-inspired cutlery that combines easy elegance with minimalist flair. Artisan crafted and designed in Canada from high-quality 18/10 stainless that’s ideal for daily

7 Lagos

Add a touch of midnight blue to mealtime with the ‘Lagos Coupe’ collection. Produced by Gibson Homewares of Los Angeles, a 40-year family-owned company with top brands, including Sur La Table, Kenmore, and Oster. 16-piece set, service for four, pictured here in a deepblue matte glaze on terracotta. $79. amazon.com

8 Tangiers

Visit Tangiers via this unique set inspired by the tilework patterns of Morocco. Made to mix and match, its patterns layer beautifully on top of a solid color dinner plate for complexity, depth, and flair. Dishwasher safe Baum stoneware. Offered in gray, navy, and turquoise. 16-piece set $61. wayfair.com

use. Offered in silver or brushed gold. Handwashing recommended to preserve faux wood features. Lifetime warranty from the Cutlery Collection. 40-piece set $149. Made in Vancouver. thecutlerycollection.com

11 Luna

Form most definitely follows function in the Luna Collection, a best seller from Pottery Barn. This is modern flatware that can be formal or casual, and “defined by linear lines with substantial weight.” Crafted of 18/10 stainless steel. In stainless, brushed gunmetal, and brushed gold. Five-piece set $50. potterybarn.com

Photography: courtesy dinnerware product manufacturers

ingredient—even during the installation of a new boiler. It maintains the same or proper pressure in the system. Hydronic specialists don’t overlook this step, no matter what.”

WHAT’S IN THE FUTURE?

We asked our team of experts: When is the time for a homeowner to abandon their original radiant heat system and seek out a replacement heating option? Their responses varied somewhat, but all seemed to share a sense of hope for the future of copper piping and a bleak outlook for steel.

“The lifetime [of steel] is very unpredictable, because not all Eichlers with steel experience leaks,” points out Hydrotech’s Denis Roman. “But if one leak is found, and more leaks [surface] over a few years, homeowners should consider other options.”

“Copper, we can repair forever,” adds Big Blue’s Paul Gerrard. “If you have steel pipes, it’s a wrap [and not worth repairing]. All [steel] repairs that we have tried…have been useless.”

And lastly, Lehmann Radiant’s Jim Lehmann, who shares Gerrard’s feelings. “Steel pipes? Forget about it,” he says. “I wouldn’t even waste my time [re pairing].”

REPLACEMENT SYSTEMS

So, what does one do after trying everything? It’s then time to explore replacing that now-defunct radiant heating system.

The most common replacement systems today are wall and ceiling mini-splits; low-profile ducting on the ceiling (such as the Unico System); and wall radiators and baseboard heaters, which can work off of the existing radiant boiler. Each has its pros and cons.

But there’s nothing like in-floor radiant heat, both for comfort and aesthetics. For an Eichler owner, installing a new one can feel like having a new lease on life. Just ask X-100 owner Marty Arbunich.

“We were at that crossroads in 2005—rotted steel piping,” he recalls. “We decided to go for re-grooving the slab and installing PEX tubing— a brand-new radiant system.”

Since the house was empty at the time, it was an ideal opportunity to take on the replacement project. But the re-grooving phase was

still quite messy.

“In the aftermath, I don’t regret the decision one bit,” Arbunich recalls.

“The X-100 is an iconic Eichler, and it would just not be the same without radiant heat. Lots of other Eichlers deserve that special care too.”

“With technology being the way it is today, it’s easy to put new radiant heat in,” adds Mike LaChance. A replacement in-floor radiant system, he says, can be installed in a month. “After a contractor removes all the flooring, we’re usually in and

RADIANT REPLACEMENTS. The three photos here show different phases of installing new radiant heat systems in Eichlers. Top: In this home, Big Blue Hydronics of the East Bay maps out where the new radiant lines will run for this replacement install. A pipe path will soon be grooved into the slab. Right: Using PEX tubing, this Eichler’s radiant is being extended into a new addition by the LaChance crew. Above: At work with Lance Eastman of Bay Area Plumbing & Heating.

out in two to three weeks.”

Replacement radiant systems today are commonly comprised of PEX tubing, a flexible polyethylene plastic. “The new PEX we use has a 25-year warranty, and is supposed to last like 100 years,” LaChance says.

INSPECTIONS ARE KEY

To keep your existing radiant heating system at the top of its game, all our radiant experts recommend regular inspections and routine maintenance.

“Eichler homeowners should have pressure tests each year,” advises LaChance. “If not for inspecting the boiler, then at least for checking to make sure the pipes in the slab are

holding water. A good 24-hour pressure test, even a 20-minute pressure test, helps.”

And before installing new flooring or initiating a remodel, a radiant inspection is imperative.

Face it, radiant heating—like mahogany paneling, expansive panels of glass, and the atrium— is what makes an Eichler an Eichler. Many homeowners rate radiant heat as one of the top three joys of Eichler living. You’ll get no argument from us about that. ■

Photography: Ernie Braun, David Toerge, Mike Gordon, Jonathan Braun, Marcela Gara; and courtesy LaChance’s Radiant Heating, American Leak Detection, Big Blue Hydronics

STORY RESOURCES

American Leak Detection

Entire Bay Area

americanleakdetection.com

Bay Area Plumbing & Heating Peninsula & South Bay | baph.com

Big Blue Hydronics East Bay | yourbigblue.com

Hydrotech Radiant Heating Marin & San Francisco hydrotechradiant.com

LaChance’s Radiant Heating Peninsula & South Bay lachancesradiantheating.com

Lehmann Radiant Heating Marin & San Francisco lehmannplumbing.com