Rufus Keeler

Rufus Bradley Keeler (1885-Oct. 29, 1934)[1] was a master ceramicist and ceramics glaze expert. He was plant superintendent of California China Products, a co-founder of California Clay Products (CalCo),[2][3][4] and plant manager of Malibu Potteries.[5][6] He was married to Mary E. Leary and had three sons and one daughter, including ceramicist Bradley Burr Keeler, who founded Brad Keeler Artwares[7] and who came to be president of the California Art Potters Association and director of the California Gift and Art Association.

Early life

Ancestry

Keeler was the son of Burr Bradley Keeler (b. Aug. 1, 1844), a Rochester, New York-born real estate owner; grandson of Rufus Keeler and Phoebe Valeau; great-grandson of Josiah Keeler and Betsey Bradley; and a descendant of Sons of the American Revolution-registered Isaac Keeler (b.1715), Lieutenant of the 5th Connecticut Regiment, and his wife, Hannah Stebbins; Josiah Keeler (b. Jan. 22, 1741-1777), a private in the 5th Connecticut Regiment, and his wife, Elizabeth Stebbins; and Philip Burr Bradley (March 26, 1738-Jan. 24, 1821), Colonel of the 5th Regiment of the American Army, and his wife, Ruth Smith.[8]

Marriage, children, and home

Keeler was born in Bellingham, Whatcom County in the state of Washington and raised in San Francisco, California. He married Mary E. Leary and together they had three sons and one daughter—Bradley Burr Keeler (b.1913),[9] Byron Keeler (b. 1925),[10] Philip Keeler,[10][9] and Jeanne Keeler—whom they raised in Huntington Park, California, later called South Gate. Keeler built a home "from scratch" for the family, installing ceramic art tile along the way,[11] including in each room "floor tiles of a distinct color and pattern with ceramic baseboards enhanced with wisteria, clematis, and yellow roses,"[12] a 8'x 9' Mayan-motif fireplace in the living room, and other lush usages.[2][13][14] He spent a year camping in the garage, the home's first completed portion, while overseeing the rest of the home's construction and performing manual labor on it himself, as well.

Friendships

Keeler was friends with Ernest A. Batchelder, a prominent early California ceramicist of the Arts and Crafts movement out of Pasadena, California.[14]

Career

Keeler worked for various clay products companies in California such as Carnegie Brick & Pottery in Carnegie, San Joaquin County, California,[15] Gladding McBean in Lincoln, California,[15] and California China Products in National City, California, the latter at which he worked as plant superintendent,[16][17][15] before starting his own business in 1917, handcrafting tiles for fireplace surrounds.[18] With the help of investors, he then expanded the business to co-found California Clay Products (CalCo) in 1923 or '24.[4][2][14][18][17]

CalCo produced tile for fireplace surrounds, wall inserts, framed tile wall hangings, wainscoting, step risers, floors, countertops, fountains, and countless iterations therein. Motifs included the flamingos, cherubs, peacocks, and Mayan and Moresque designs.[19] The company's tile was installed in many private as well as public structures, one such being Jardin El Encanto, a 1927 real estate office in Monterey Park, California that in the modern era is the Greater Monterey Park Chamber of Commerce.[20] CalCo tile also found its way into the Lt. Earl R. & Mildred B. De Long House in San Diego,[21] the Montclair Women's Club in Oakland, California,[12] and the Watts Towers in Watts, California.[22]

In 1926, Keeler was recruited to oversee Malibu Potteries, founded by Rhoda May Knight Rindge. There, he oversaw a staff of 125 employees including his former CalCo employee, Lillian Ball, who became a Malibu Potteries tile glazer, then his personal assistant and secretary;[10] tile designers William Handley, Inez Garnet Johnson Von Hake,[23] and Donald Prouty;[24][25] clayman and presser Glen Dawson,[26] secretary Dorothy Prouty,[25] and others.

The factory produced 30,000 square feet of tile monthly,[27][28] tile that met the demand of the 1920s real estate boom[29][30][31][32] of Mission Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, Moorish Revival, and Mayan Revival homes and public buildings. Malibu tile made its way into the Roosevelt Hotel,[27] Los Angeles City Hall,[24][27] the Geffen Playhouse (then the Masonic Affiliates Club), the Mayan Theater, Dana Junior High School in San Pedro,[33] the Adamson House, and countless private homes.

Malibu Potteries ceased to be in 1932 due to the intersection of a major kiln fire which destroyed the entirety of the factory, the Great Depression, and its owner, May Rindge's debt. From there, Keeler worked as a freelance ceramics consultant for the span of about a year. He then gained a full-time position with Emsco Refractories, located at 8661 Dorothy Ave. in South Gate, whose specialty was aircraft manufacture "but had a subsidiary business producing very high temperature-resistant ceramic tiles"[13] as well as bricks.[34]

Death and legacy

Keeler died of inadvertent cyanide inhalation while working in his Emsco Refractories laboratory. He had forgotten to turn on the exhaust fan in the lab and, incidentally, someone had carelessly left a beaker of uncorked cyanide on a nearby workbench, its odorless vapors already extant in the room.[13] Keeler died ten days later, on Oct. 29, 1934. His wife, Mary, continued to live in the home Keeler had built for the family in South Gate, remaining in residence there until 1983, when her son, Philip, had to move her to a nursing home in Orange County, California. Through a series of fortunate events, a man named Brian Kaiser was able to purchase the home and has since become an expert on Rufus Keeler, his tile-making, and Southern California tile companies of the early 20th century,[14][2][35] lecturing on the topic and acting as a consultant for tile preservation projects.[36][37] Meanwhile, Keeler's products remain extant throughout Southern California and beyond, public examples of which are the aforementioned Roosevelt Hotel,[27] Los Angeles City Hall,[24][27] Geffen Playhouse, Mayan Theater, Dana Junior High School in San Pedro,[33] and Adamson House in Malibu as well as the Watts Towers in Watts, California and Serra Retreat in Malibu.

References
  1. "Mary E Leary Keeler (1888-1987) - Find A Grave-gedenkplek".
  2. "The tile detectives". Los Angeles Times. October 14, 2004.
  3. Hemmerlein, Sandi (August 22, 2017). "Explore the Remnants of SoCal's Historical Tile Industry". KCET.
  4. "Brick and Clay Record: A Semi-monthly Record of the World's Progress in Clayworking..." December 29, 1923 – via Google Books.
  5. "Malibu Potteries plant - MP-1". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  6. Arnold, Liz (July 9, 2014). "The Quest to Save LA's Century-Old Batchelder Tiles". Curbed.
  7. "Catalog of Copyright Entries: Third series". Copyright Office, Library of Congress. December 29, 1951 – via Google Books.
  8. Society, Sons of the American Revolution California (December 29, 1901). "Register of the California Society of the Sons of the American Revolution: instituted at San Francisco, California, October 22d, 1875 as Sons of Revolutionary Sires" – via Google Books.
  9. "Don and Dorothy Prouty with Rufus Keeler sons, Philip and Bradley. - MP-80". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  10. "Lillian Ball and the Keeler boys - MP-110". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  11. "Rufus Keeler home - KA-5.b". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  12. "A Stunning Arts & Crafts Fireplace: A Mayan Revival | Two Red Roses Foundation". www.tworedroses.com.
  13. "The House That Rufus Built - KA-11". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  14. "Living in an all-tile house is a one-of-a-kind experience". March 6, 2010.
  15. "Brickmakers". calbricks.netfirms.com.
  16. "The History of the California China Products Company of National City, California, 1911-1917".
  17. "Calco History & Photos". November 21, 2012.
  18. Giorgini, Frank (December 29, 2001). Handmade Tiles: Designing, Making, Decorating. Lark Books. ISBN 9781579902711 – via Google Books.
  19. "Tile Heritage E-NEWS". www.tileheritage.org.
  20. "Jardin El Encanto". February 11, 2016.
  21. http://sandiego.cfwebtools.com/images/files/4990Westminster.pdf
  22. Goldstone, Bud; Goldstone, Arloa Paquin (December 29, 1997). The Los Angeles Watts Towers. Getty Publications. ISBN 9780892364916 – via Google Books.
  23. "The Johnson family - MP-78". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  24. "LA City Hall Panels - MP-94". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  25. "Don and Dorothy Prouty - MP-21". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  26. "Glen Dawson and his bike - MP-91". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  27. Abel, Judy. "Preserving the history of Malibu Pottery tiles". Malibu Times.
  28. "Welcome to Adamson House". www.adamsonhouse.org.
  29. "Bubbles, Panics & Crashes – Historical Collections – Harvard Business School". www.library.hbs.edu.
  30. ROBINSON, W. W. (1942). "The Southern California Real Estate Boom of the Twenties". The Quarterly: Historical Society of Southern California. 24 (1): 25–30. doi:10.2307/41167994. JSTOR 41167994.
  31. Reft, Ryan (November 14, 2013). "Bungling Across America: The Bungalow in Southern California and Beyond". KCET.
  32. Brocker, Michael; Hanes, Christopher (July 14, 2014). "The 1920s American Real Estate Boom and the Downturn of the Great Depression: Evidence from City Cross-Sections". Housing and Mortgage Markets in Historical Perspective: 161–201. doi:10.7208/chicago/9780226093284.003.0006. S2CID 153112046 – via www.nber.org.
  33. "Two 7' x 13' murals by Don Prouty - MP-120". adamsonhouse.pastperfectonline.com.
  34. "Brickmakers". calbricks.netfirms.com.
  35. "History revealed". July 6, 2008.
  36. "Restoration Resources 2018". The Glendale Historical Society.
  37. Cooper, Kim (September 16, 2015). "A Brian Kaiser Tile Talk: Ernest Batchelder & The Roebling Building – September 2013".
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