Everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure, feasting on the cartoons in The New Yorker, can now be satiated by a museum visit. ‘On the Couch: Cartoons from The New Yorker,’ an exhibition of more than 50 cartoons published in the award-winning magazine, is currently on view at the Skirball Cultural Center. Presented in honor of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the show illustrates nearly 80 years of our culture’s preoccupation with psychoanalysis. The assemblage includes the clever works of such beloved artists as William Steig, Roz Chast, J.C. Duffy and B.E. Kaplan. The New Yorker’s first cartoon foray into the realm of psychoanalysis appeared in the April 30, 1927 issue, two years after the magazine’s founding. It was a drawing by Peter Arno that portrays King Henry VIII confiding his misdeeds to his therapist, who reacts by climbing up on a chair–in terror! Since this first cartoon poking fun at Freud and his methods, cartoonists for The New Yorker have revisited the subject through the lenses of their times. From just two psychoanalysis-related cartoons in 1927, the number published annually in The New Yorker more than doubled within a decade. These early works tended to focus on the core components of Freud’s newly introduced theories, particularly dream analysis, the Oedipus complex and repressed sex drives. Over time, cartoons about psychoanalysis began to appear with greater frequency as Freudian therapy–its techniques and catch phrases–gained visibility in the public imagination and popular culture. During the heyday of Freudianism, which spanned the 1940s through the 1970s, The New Yorker ran between eight and 15 cartoons on therapy every year. To date, some 400 cartoons on the subject have been featured in the magazine. ‘Cartoons are emotional truth,’ said acclaimed cartoonist Bob Mankoff, the magazine’s cartoon editor, during a lecture on opening night of the exhibition. ‘It’s really about the human condition: tragic but not serious.’ Roughly 1,000 cartoons are submitted to The New Yorker every week. Mankoff chooses the best 30 or 40 before sitting down with editor David Remnick to make the final cut for the magazine. A lecture by exhibition curator Michael Freund entitled ‘Jokes and Psychoanalysis: Who Understands Whom?’will take place at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 25. He will examine why jokes on Freudianism are funny and outline current research on the cultural relativity of humor. A family cartooning workshop, led by artist Emily Cohen for children ages 5 and up and their families, will take place from 2 to 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, November 19. A companion book, ‘On the Couch: A Book of Psychoanalysis Cartoons,’ is available for purchase in the Skirball’s museum store. The Skirball is located at 2791 N. Sepulveda Blvd. (off the 405). Contact: 440-4500 or visit www.skirball.org.

Everything is black and white and yet nothing is. It is the fall of 1964 and an ominous chill hangs in the air at St. Nicholas School in the Bronx. Under the direction and scrutiny of Sister Aloysius, enthusiastic teachers need to be reprimanded and students who use ballpoints instead of fountain pens might as well be running with scissors. In this taut moral and religious environment, someone is to blame even if no one is to blame. And Sister Aloysius gets the last word. When she suspects a popular priest has preyed on one of his male students, nothing can stop her from driving him out of the church community, even when her own moral clarity is called into question. The ambiguity of whether Father Flynn is guilty of child abuse is the power behind John Patrick Shanley’s compelling drama ‘Doubt,” an intellectual and emotional production directed by Doug Hughes at the Ahmanson Theatre. Shanley advises in the program notes that we embrace our doubt, for this uncertainty is “a passionate exercise” that often leads to awakening and insight. Cherry Jones, who earned a Tony Award for her portrayal of Sister Aloysius on Broadway, reprises her role, as does Tony-winner Adriane Lenox in the role of Mrs. Muller, the mother of the boy in question. My only regret was not being able to hear some of their dialogue because of poor acoustics under the balcony in the entirely too large Ahmanson. Over the course of the play, we see many sides to Jones’ Sister Aloysius. We see a frail woman with a piercing gaze and fearsome spirit. We see a prodding, manipulative principal who can slam drawers and make a fellow nun cry or take her under her wing as a confidant. “Don’t let a little blood fuddle your judgment,” she tells the young, open-minded Sister James when one of her students has a nosebleed. “God gave you a brain and a heart. The heart is warm, but your wits must be cold.” Sister Aloysius’ small, stuffy office functions as an interrogation room and her interactions with Sister James (Lisa Joyce) and Father Flynn (Chris McGarry) play out like scenes from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” with Jones in full command of her character’s ability to extract key bits of potentially damaging information. Even the audience feels vulnerable under her stare. But we also sympathize with Sister Aloysius because, after all, her shoulders–slightly raised under the black habit–are heavy with responsibility. Her duty to the Catholic church and to the children, whom she feels she must protect from potential evil, is more important to her than whether or not Father Flynn has done anything wrong. No ones seems to know this more than Father Flynn himself, but he refuses to let her use this as an excuse for accusing him of malfeasance. McGarry plays the causal, modern priest, raising his voice and blatantly revealing his character’s more secular attitude, like when he suggests they include “Frosty the Snowman” in the Christmas pageant. The audience sympathizes with Father Flynn even though he seems, at times, too defensive and forward with respect to Sister Aloysius, settling down in her office chair and then standing over her, inches from her face. In the middle of this tangled web is the vulnerable and easily intimidated Sister James, a budding nun under the stringent guise of Sister Aloysius. In this role, Joyce gives an emotional performance, revealing her character’s desperate search for the truth. Ultimately, Sister James is the most obvious example of Shanley’s message that some of the darkest moments, when you lose yourself completely, are the beginning of growth and enlightenment. The one character who comes in from outside of the hermetic world of St. Nicholas is Mrs. Muller, and her interaction with Sister Aloysius is particularly intense because she doesn’t fold under the principal’s prodding and, in fact, challenges Sister Aloysius on all accounts. Lenox’s portrayal of the dignified, strong-willed mother struggling to keep her son afloat in a hard world, is riveting. ‘Doubt’ runs through October 29 at the Ahmanson Theatre. For tickets ($20-$80), call (213) 628-2772 or visit www.CenterTheatreGroup.org.

As guest of honor at The Nature of Wildworks Benefit held recently at the Beach Club, Terry Sheridan Matkins exhibited a sampling of her photographs from around the world and here at home as the official wildlife photographer for The Nature of Wildworks. The benefit sale raised $32,000 for the care of the animals and educational outreach. A longtime resident of Pacific Palisades, Terry enrolled in photography classes more than 30 years ago in order to take better pictures of her children. Then she began traveling, learning from some of the best photographers around, constantly honing her craft and meeting people. In 1998 she joined the Grosvenor Council, which supports The National Geographic Society. Being a member of the Council allowed her to indulge her two passions, traveling and photography. Terry sailed with Bob Ballard, discoverer of the Titanic, while he searched for evidence of prior human life under the Black Sea. She went on expeditions with Wade Davis (Explorer-in-Residence for National Geographic) to Nepal and Tibet. She traveled on horseback through Mongolia, her photographs helping to raise funds for Mongolia’s park system. Her photos of Peru can be found throughout Carol Cume’s book, ‘Journey to Machu Picchu.’ Terry has been to Africa, where she recorded the birth of a baby giraffe, an almost impossible feat. She has been to Laos, Cambodia, Egypt and Mexico. Here in Los Angeles she spent time in South Central taking photographs of ex-gang members for a benefit honoring Father Greg Boyle and the Homeboy Industries. And this fall she heads off to India. Since she is often in countries where she doesn’t speak the language, photography gives Terry the chance to respond to people in a nonverbal way. ‘It’s not even about taking the photograph or the photograph itself,’ she says. ‘ It’s the interaction with the people as well as the animals that I enjoy. I try to express the respect I have for them and their culture through my photographs.’ For Terry, different cultures offer different opportunities. India draws her because it’s colorful, exotic and fascinating. In Africa it’s about capturing the majesty of the animals, the immensity of the land, the agelessness of the people. In Peru and Mongolia, it’s the generosity of the people. ‘They invite you into their huts and share their last bits of food with you. It’s incredible,’ Terry says. This experience and her appreciation for their endless generosity of spirit is what Terry tries to capture in her photographs and bring back for others to see. ‘In general, they are just people, and we have more in common with them than not.’ Once home, like photographers in their dark rooms, Terry begins to work wonders on her computer. Using watercolor paper and archival ink, she turns a photograph of zebras into a blend of photographic realism and watercolor impressionism. A cheetah sitting in the grass takes on the look of an oil painting. Other photographs she changes to sepia then sharpens and softens them until she gets the effect she wants. And often there is a call from The Nature of Wildworks to come up and photograph a new arrival. Capturing the images of a baby mountain lion in perpetual motion as it springs from one side of its enclosure to another is no easy task. Nor is it easy to catch the alertness of a young fox’s eyes when its nose is smudging your lens and a second baby fox chews on your camera straps.

Garden enthusiasts have much to cheer about with the ongoing renovation of The Outdoor Room by new owner Jami Burrows. Vintage mid-century metal chairs situated at the entry of the nursery immediately announce an entirely new vibe. The structure, stripped to its elegantly spare post-and-beam essence and gleaming with a fresh coat of white paint, is now a light-filled haven for perusing inspired vignettes of modern outdoor furnishings and eclectic accessories for the garden. By far the biggest stars are the plants themselves: striking arrangements of robust succulents, grasses, dahlias, rosebushes and trees–even hard-to-find burgundy iceberg roses–abound, with new plants arriving almost daily. Burrows’ grand vision is to offer a variety of plant materials equal to Sperling, the multi-acre nursery in Calabasas, amid a contemporary, boutique-style setting. Burrows officially took possession of the property on July 26, and has been working six-day weeks ever since. Demand–what she estimates as 20 to 30 people stopping by daily hoping to garden shop–prompted what Burrows calls a ‘soft opening.’ ‘People are so excited about the new nursery,’ she says, ‘I couldn’t turn them away.’ She’s already sold sets of her new line of garden furniture, a sleek combination of teak and stainless steel. A major shipment of furniture and accessories from Bali should arrive in time for the grand opening on Saturday, November 18. In addition to restoring the local nursery as a full-service garden maintenance and design business, Burrows’ plan also includes an on-site florist, weekly garden seminars and a kids’ summer camp. Located at the corner of Sunset and Los Liones Drive, the nursery became The Outdoor Room in 1997 when award-winning designer Sandy Kennedy purchased what had been Sawyer Nurseries and transformed it into a high-end haven for horticulturists. After Kennedy’s untimely death in 2004, the nursery began losing much of its luster, limping along without the benefit of its founder’s vision. Observing this, an ambitious Burrows tracked down the owner, Dr. Linda Lack, to pursue purchase of the business. Lack and Kennedy had been partners in life and business, though Lack’s background is in education, not horticulture. Impressed by Burrows’ enthusiasm and vision, Lack agreed to sell. The Outdoor Room’s two-acre site is owned by the J. Paul Getty Trust (purchased in June 2005), and Burrows is negotiating a long-term lease. The new venture is a family affair, with Burrows partnering with her father, Mike Minder, who owns an investment company in Calabasas. Her mother, an interior designer, and sister, Melissa, a teacher in Santa Monica, will also be unofficial players. Burrows, a Malibu native, lives in Pacific Palisades with her 9-year-old son, Chet, and 10-year-old daughter, Violet, both students at Marquez Charter Elementary. For 15 years, she worked in the film business as a costume designer and wardrobe consultant before switching creative gears two years ago and enrolling in UCLA’s landscape architecture program. Although her design skills incorporate every garden style, Burrows says she leans more toward minimalist, modern schemes. ‘We want to become a destination for gardeners, where you can find things that nobody else has,’ Burrows says. ‘This is a long-term venture and we hope to be a big part of the Palisades community.’ The Outdoor Room is located at 17311 Sunset Blvd. Hours are 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday. Contact: 454-5252 or visit www.theoutdooroom.com. —— This article was printed in the September Home and Garden Issue.

When Palisades Charter Elementary School Principal Tami Weiser was told that her school was slated for both interior and exterior painting, she panicked at picking the colors–but only for a minute. She called a parent, Eva Sobesky, who had a first grader at the school, and asked for help. Sobesky, a Palisades resident, happens to be an award-winning architect and has her own firm, EIS Architects in Venice. She in turn enlisted another first grade parent, Helena Berge, who just happens to work at her firm, to help her with the project. Palisades Elementary was told by LAUSD officials that the palate for both exterior and interior buildings was limited to 15 colors, but the school could pick the colors, which isn’t always the case with LAUSD schools. Having Sobesky as a volunteer consultant had to help. Sobesky and Berge began by taking photos of each building on campus and then used PhotoShop to “paint” each of them in potential colors. Originally, Sobesky thought that white might help the children focus better, but found to her surprise that research showed just the opposite: vibrant colors affect children in very positive ways. It helps them think and focus, especially elementary-aged children. Yellow has a positive effect on children’s psyche. Another issue facing Sobesky and Berge was having beautiful 1931 original buildings juxtaposed with classroom bungalows that aren’t so beautiful. How do you unite them and make the campus look like it’s one entitiy? Sobesky approached the interior courtyard as if it were a Mexican or European piazza. She told Weiser, “The courtyard is the soul of the school and the colors should reflect that.” So the two architects chose bold colors, like zippy gold, orange spice and bittersweet. They joked that if it didn’t turn out, they would have to move to another elementary school. After Sobesky and Weiser had colored in each of the buildings on paper, they made a booklet with the color choices and presented them to LAUSD officials. In subsequent meetings, they explained why they had made the choices they did. For example, they chose a strong color for the auditorium–“deluxe,” a bright orange yellow, almost pumpkin. They felt that since special events such as graduations, assemblies and student performances occur at that site, the auditorium should stand out. In addition, they wanted people passing by to have a hint of the magnificent colors that grace the courtyard. After school began and the buildings were all freshly painted, Weiser told the Palisadian-Post: “The energy level has been so positive on the yard. The bright colors are putting out a good feeling.”

Architect Virgil McDowell walked into his career by chance. It was a sweltering day on the Cal State Northridge campus and McDowell, a sophomore at the university in the 1980s, detoured through some air-conditioned buildings on his way to football practice. ‘As I was walking through the art building, I saw renderings–sketches–on the wall and they bowled me over,’ McDowell says. In retrospect, he jokes that the student sketches probably weren’t all that good, but at the time, they inspired him to begin taking fine art classes (Northridge didn’t have an architecture program). When he separated his shoulder playing football and lost his football scholarship, art became a priority and a passion. McDowell, who now runs a three-person firm in Pacific Palisades, was fascinated by architecture at a young age. He grew up in South Los Angeles and remembers visiting the Wiltern Theatre at Wilshire and Western with his siblings when he was 10 or 11. ‘They would run up to the balcony and I’d be in the lobby, looking at the ceiling,’ he says. As a student at Washington High School, McDowell studied mechanical drafting as part of a vocational program. These skills, combined with his college experience in fine-art drawing, helped him land a job working for an architect for $5 an hour when he was 20. He gradually began educating himself, realizing that some of the people he was working for were not the kind of mentors he wanted. One of his bosses would simply change the roofing material for a project depending on what style home the client wanted–tile for a Spanish, shingle for Colonial, slate for French. McDowell started reading about the architects he admired from the 1920s and 1930s–American classicists like John Russell Pope and Philip Trammell Shutze. ‘They all did these Grand Tours,’ he says. ‘They’d take a boat over to Europe and stay six months–sketch, photograph, draw–then come back, reinterpret [the architecture] and build American houses.’ McDowell decided to follow in the footsteps of these masters by making ‘study tours’ in Europe. Beginning in the early 1990s, he would choose a country and region, fly over for an extended weekend (Thursday to Sunday), stay in hostels and photograph architecture. ‘I’d come home, get the photographs produced and weed through what worked and what didn’t work, and [discover] what I actually should have been looking at,’ he says. McDowell would research the architecture, wait six months, and return to photograph the same region again. Over a period of six years, exploring England, Ireland, France and Italy, his eye became fine-tuned. He then started traveling to the East Coast to tour the homes designed by well-known regional architects who had either studied in Europe (at schools such as the Ecole des Beaux-Arts) or made Grand Tours. ‘One of the most difficult things is to see a villa or an Irish Georgian country house [in Europe] and ask, ‘How does this translate over here [in the United States]?” McDowell says. ‘Because it’s not going to be the same scale. So, when you tour homes by American architects like William Bottomley, David Adler and John Staub, you see their interpretations.’ McDowell, who has particular expertise in the American Renaissance (1880-1930), worked as a draftsman before establishing his firm, Virgil W. McDowell, Inc., in 1989. He initially worked on small-scale projects that helped him understand how homes were put together–what type of hardware to use, where to put sconces, how rooms should be lit. He recalls that, early in his career, he was hired to do restoration work on Paul Williams homes in Toluca Lake, Hancock Park and Beverly Hills ‘purely because [the clients] were trying to find someone who just did detailing, not because I was knowledgeable of [Williams’] work.’ The project that really got his firm going in 1998 was a Georgian cottage in the Hollywood Hills. The owner, an antiques collector, ‘was disenchanted with the whole process’ of working with architects on the design of the cottage, McDowell recalls. ‘He had started construction and shut his job down, and let it sit there for eight months because he was so unhappy.’ What McDowell offered this client was a home that would work with modern technology but would feel and respond like a traditional, classical home with symmetry and proportional relationships. ‘What the architects practiced back then [in the ’20s and ’30s], or searched for, was this enduring beauty,’ McDowell says, ‘but it was also about the way a house functions–well-made and honest architecture–so people can live in and enjoy it.’ He adds, ‘What most people will consider difficult clients are actually my best clients. What they’re trying to achieve is that enduring beauty, that timeless quality. And it’s hard to pull off.’ In order to show clients his European approach to design and his knowledge of traditional classical architecture, McDowell decided to create an office that was a showroom as well as a working space. He found the perfect location three years ago in the Business Block building, a small, narrow space above Starbucks overlooking Swarthmore. McDowell turned the office into what he describes as ‘a library you might see in Manhattan, overlooking Central Park–classical, with restraint–something that David Adler or Paul Williams would do.’ A cased opening divides the space into two rooms–a fabric room with linen walls and a wood-paneled room. Reproductions of French sconces hang on the walls and carriage lanterns adorn the ceilings. ‘The existing door is actually a great proportion for two doors,’ says McDowell, who designed the paneled double doors with European proportions. The reeded gold doorknobs are much lower than the keyhole, as would be in England and France. These ‘classically sound’ designs are often cost-effective, according to McDowell, who says, ‘A proportion window doesn’t cost more than an ill-proportioned window.’ He explains that, in many cases, when a classical home is not designed with attention to detail, ‘the owner may feel the house is not responding correctly, so they pump up materials–like they’ll use more stone or granite to try to get some feel out of it, which is more costly. ‘The challenging part of any project is when to stop,’ he says. ‘What you try to do is design and build in a manner so the house actually looks its best when it’s finished.’ McDowell is currently working on a David Adler house in Lake Forest, Illinois, and two Roland Coate houses–one in Hancock Park and one in San Marino. The latter house, a Spanish Colonial Revival completed in 1925, was one of many large-scale estates designed by Coate in which site, landscape and architecture were interwoven. ‘We did not change the footprint,’ McDowell says, standing over the original blueprints. ‘We’re going to gut some rooms to make a larger kitchen and a large family room in a seamless manner that will feel like it’s always existed, like we weren’t even there.’ McDowell attributes his ability to figure out difficult spaces to a game he played in his youth with his four siblings. ‘My dad used to give us [jigsaw] puzzles as kids but he would take the box cover away, so what you’re looking at are just shapes and colors. It took time, but after we started [doing puzzles this way], I couldn’t do it looking at a box.’ McDowell’s firm specializes in the planning, design and landscaping of custom residential projects, including additions, restorations and the adaptive reuse of existing space as well as new construction. Many of his designs feature handcrafted limestone and custom ironwork as well as older, traditional materials such as slate, Spanish tile roofs, antique heart-of-pine floors and unique architectural antique doors, floor tiles and hand-carved stone reliefs. ‘What has pushed my career forward is when people purchase homes that have a rich history, in certain areas like in Lake Forest, Illinois, or in the Hamptons, or Hancock Park or Pasadena, and they want to work on the house, enlarge it or embellish it,’ McDowell says. ‘There’s a search for who can make this happen. That’s been the bulk of my work–how to interpret these individual homes and make them great without ever feeling like I was there. It’s so seamless.’ Contact: Virgil McDowell at 459-8838 or visit www.virgilmcdowell.com.

As the single owner of one of the largest and most valuable pieces of American real estate at the turn of the last century, May Rindge had enemies: State Highway technocrats. Land developers. And railroad barons. Each wanted a chunk of her 13,000-acre estate that constitutes much of modern-day Malibu. Southern Pacific Railroad wanted to lay track. Developers wanted to build beach houses, and the State wanted to construct a highway to connect L.A. with Ventura. Costly legal and political battles inevitably ensued. And within two decades of the death of her husband in 1905, Frederick Rindge, her fortune was ensnared. Land rich and cash poor, she searched for a way to preserve her massive estate and realize Mr. Rindge’s dream of creating an ‘American Riviera.’ She hired geologists to search for oil, but they found something else: clay. Vast quantities of red and white clay lay buried in local bluffs and canyons. The era’s breakneck housing growth and the region’s appetite for Mediterranean-style houses produced a strong demand for ceramic tile. In 1926, after the discovery of clay and a $250,000 investment from Rindge, Malibu Potteries was born. Today, more than 70 years after a fire consumed the factory and Rindge’s business dream, the tiles that Malibu Potteries created are considered to be among the highest quality American-made tiles ever produced. And they adorn some of the region’s most respected landmarks. Twenty-three large and subdued art-deco tile panels adorn the inner sanctums of L.A. City Hall. At the Mayan Theatre, Malibu tiles steeped in indigenous style were used to decorate the floors, walls and ceilings. At Serra Retreat and the Adamson House, both built by the Rindges, almost every room was designed with a reverence for the tile. Spanish-Moresque tiles garnish shelves, bath tubs and fountains there. At Serra Retreat, the tiles were also used to create a 60-ft.-long Persian ‘rug’. Countless homes throughout Southern California, which were constructed in the 1920s and 1930s, featured Malibu tile. Architects and developers of the era imagined Southern California as the new Mediterranean Riviera and borrowed heavily from Spanish and Italian style. This meant incorporating tile into the design of every part of the house–and big money for companies like Malibu Potteries. Cristi Walden, a docent at the Adamson House, has spent the last 25 years studying and collecting Malibu tiles. She attributes their high quality and the company’s early success to Rufus Keeler, Malibu Potteries’ manager. Although Rindge owned Malibu Potteries, Keeler was responsible for the construction of the factory as well as the overall production of the tiles. He brought decades of ceramics experience to Malibu Potteries. After graduating from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he studied ceramics, Keeler began making tile for several companies in the San Francisco area. And he helped to produce the tile used to refurnish San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. The Malibu Potteries’ factory was built on the beach a half-mile south of the Malibu Pier, and Keeler slept in a tent outside during the week. In historical accounts, former employees described lunch-breaks spent swimming and canoeing in front of the factory. According to Walden, Keeler’s secret glazes account for the tiles’ legendary strength and luster. Glazes resemble glass and provide protection for the clay, and they are critical to the longevity of tile. Decades after they were created, the tiles show few signs of aging. Keeler fiercely guarded the glaze used to make Malibu tiles. In fact, anyone who entered the glaze room without permission could expect to be fired from the company and banned from the industry. It is known now that Keeler used ingredients not easily available to his competitors and not legal to ceramists today: lead, cobalt and uranium. Malibu Potteries and its contemporaries used oil-fueled kilns to heat the clay, which are now illegal. While Malibu tiles’ glaze was a secret, its artistic designs were not. Keeler built the factory with the artists in mind: they shared an office with large windows that overlooked the ocean. He wanted to create an environment that inspired the artists, but the overwhelming popularity of old Spanish styles did not demand creativity. Frequently, the design team directly replicated tile patterns from European design books. Their patterns generally followed Spanish-Moresque, Persian and Art Deco templates. Of the 40 tile companies that competed with Malibu Potteries in the 1920s and 1930s, only two have survived. Despite the longevity of its creation, Rindge’s company was short-lived. Born in the boom of the 1920s, it died during doldrums of the Great Depression. Weakened housing growth after the onset of economic bust meant constant uncertainty for the new business. Malibu Potteries was stuck in a cycle of hiring and firing its talented work force. But fire ultimately debilitated the company. In November 1931, a fire started at night in the clay preparation room of the factory and burned 50 percent of the plant and inventory. Despite a few failed attempts to resuscitate the business, it officially closed in 1932. In only six years of its existence, Malibu Potteries produced hundreds of thousands of square feet of tile. But decades later, the tiles are scarce and valuable. A single tile can be sold for thousands of dollars. Paradoxically, the high value of Malibu tile is the greatest threat to its survival. Thousands of homes constructed in the 1920s used tile, and each year dozens of homeowners call the Malibu Lagoon Museum in hope of confirming that their tile was created by Malibu Potteries. And all too often, people are willing to tear out pieces of the tile from their homes to sell pieces individually, even if that means ruining the original work, said Walden, who authenticates Malibu tile. Perhaps as a function of this trend, Malibu tiles have acquired a new life. Mosaics constructed of a pastiche of tiles have proliferated. Office buildings in Santa Monica mix Malibu tiles with other tiles in a mix that is redefining tiles’ aesthetic of fragmentation.