1920s Vintage Hillside Pottery Birdbath

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This is an extraordinary hillside birdbath from the 1920’s, it features a gorgeous black and orange tile mosaic placed thoughtfully … Read more This is an extraordinary hillside birdbath from the 1920’s, it features a gorgeous black and orange tile mosaic placed thoughtfully throughout the base and around the rim of the bath. It was salvaged along with another vessel (see other listings) and would look wonderful in any style home.

Hillside pottery is amongst some of the rarest of its time.

They originated in the 1920s and 30s as small operations located on the side of the road. They were crafting high-quality decorative garden ware molded in cement to complement the old Craftsman and Spanish colonial styles of the era . This type of pottery is so rare that much of the history is still unknown about the company and products themselves or even the people who worked there.

Hillside operated from a yard located on an isolated stretch of highway 11720 Ventura Blvd. in North Hollywood area in the San Fernando Valley. They made vessels ranging from large oil jars to small Jardinere‘s that were all hand formed using mixtures of cement decorative bands were then designed and made from tiny mosaic tiles and or broken tile shards. The tile was then inlaid flush with the vessel surface. Many of the styles were influences of Spanish or Italian origin.

In recent times hillside has been used as a descriptive term referring to cement or concrete where that was also crafted elsewhere in the state. Products have been including garden wall plaques, lamp bases, benches, urns ,and planters of all sizes and shapes Little to no documentation has been uncovered on these roadside businesses though it is believed that there were possibly only five in number making these old concrete vessels even more valuable and an even rarer find. See less