CASSANDRA NEHF
Staff Writer
Malibu resident Janine Waldbaum carries on an artistic tradition, building on local history with her tile-making company, Malibu Tile Works.
Inspired by the tile art designs of the Ernest Batchelder and Moravian Pottery companies in her hometown of Doylestown, Penn., and the local works of Malibu Potteries, Waldbaum continues the tile-making craft using similar old-world techniques.
Waldbaum said she has always been interested in art and has tried many different crafts. She described herself as a “do-it-yourselfer” and said these qualities led to her interest in tile art.
While remodeling her home, Waldbaum said she realized she could not find tile to match what she envisioned for her kitchen. She decided to make the tile herself.
“For the same amount of money I’d pay to have something that was only partly what I wanted, I could buy the supplies and make the tile myself,” she said. “I would have my own kiln when I was finished, too.”
What began as that home-improvement project then became a hobby and, ultimately, a career. Waldbaum experimented with techniques and designs. Over the course of a few years, she created her own glaze-resist formula and a line of tile-making tools.
Waldbaum said she became engrossed in tile making and soon realized she needed to turn her passion into a career if she wanted to continue.
She opened Malibu Tile Works, a tile art company that now creates custom designs, address tiles, framed art tiles and murals.
Waldbaum specializes in two techniques — cuerda-seca and textured relief.
The cuerda-seca technique was made popular by Malibu Potteries in the 1920s. An outline is traced onto the baked clay tile and then filled with color. The glaze, a mixture of manganese and oil, resists the outline and pools between the lines. Once fired, the resist leaves charred black lines around smooth, raised areas of color. The charred resist outlines give the cuerda-seca technique it’s name, which means “dry line.”
In the textured-relief technique, hand sculpted molds are used on an open press. The tiles are then hand painted. This same technique is used at the Moravian and Batchelder companies that first inspired Wauldbaum.
Both techniques are laborious, but Waldbaum said the look is unparalleled.
“There’s nothing that compares,” Waldbaum said. “It can’t be done on a machine. It would look like the same stuff you can get at the nearest Home Depot.”
Waldbaum said she most enjoys the excitement of opening her kiln and seeing the finished product.
Waldbaum’s work can be seen in several panels at Webster Elementary School in Malibu.
09-22-2005
