Pond Farm Pottery, 17000 Armstrong Woods Road, Guerneville, Sonoma County, CA

Entry 2013 HALS Challenge: Documenting the Cultural Landscapes of Women.
Significance: The Pond Farm Pottery landscape is significant as the school, studio, and residence of Marguerite Wildenhain, an influential ceramist and teacher. Although originally intended to be an artists' colony for Bauhaus-trained artisans forced to flee Nazi-occupied Germany, the enterprise quickly fell apart due to internal dissension. After 1952 Wildenhain was the only artist to remain in residence at Pond Farm Studio. From 1942 onward, she almost single-handedly converted a nineteenth-century livestock barn into a ceramics studio and showroom; cultivated the surrounding grounds with vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers; and built a residence for herself.
Unprocessed Field note material exists for this structure: N99
Survey number: HALS CA-95
Building/structure dates: ca. 1949 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: ca. 1962 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1956 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: ca. 1964 Subsequent Work