Qualla: The Bauhaus in the Redwoods

The Bauhaus in the Redwoods: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikeVdP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marguerite Wildenhain was packing to leave Europe when her husband was turned away. It was March 3, 1940. She was Jewish; he was not. The quota for German citizens had been filled, so Frans stayed behind in the Netherlands while Marguerite sailed for America alone. The couple had trained together at the Weimar Bauhaus, run a pottery shop called Het Kruike in Putten, and planned to start fresh at an artists' colony in the California redwoods. The war would separate them for seven years. When they finally reunited, their marriage would collapse. But the colony -- Pond Farm, perched on a hilltop above Guerneville -- would endure, in one form or another, for more than four decades.

Image: MikeVdP | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bauhaus in the Redwoods: A Sanctuary for a World Gone Amuck

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikeVdP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Gordon Herr was an architect. Jane Herr was a writer. Together, around 1939, they acquired a 250-acre property called Rancho Del Lago near the Russian River, about seventy-five miles north of San Francisco. A large pond gave the place its new name. The Herrs expanded their holdin...

Image: MikeVdP | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bauhaus in the Redwoods: The Colony Assembles

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikeVdP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marguerite arrived first and alone. She reached Pond Farm in 1942, helped lay water lines, built a house with her own hands, and worked with Gordon Herr to restore a barn into a pottery workshop. The Hexagon House followed in 1949 -- a gathering place near the entrance to Armstro...

Image: MikeVdP | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bauhaus in the Redwoods: Strong Personalities, Short Fuses

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikeVdP, CC BY-SA 4.0. The very quality that had carried these artists through war and displacement -- the fierce independence of their personalities -- proved incompatible with communal living. "Constant bickering tore the group apart," the Herrs' grandson Tim Tivoli Steele wrote. The professional fri...

Image: MikeVdP | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bauhaus in the Redwoods: The Potter Who Stayed

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikeVdP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Nearly every artist left -- but not Marguerite. When the colony fell apart, she remained on the hilltop and continued teaching pottery alone, transforming Pond Farm Workshops into Pond Farm Pottery. Her methods were exacting. New students began with dog dishes. They learned every...

Image: MikeVdP | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Bauhaus in the Redwoods: National Treasure

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MikeVdP, CC BY-SA 4.0. Marguerite Wildenhain died in 1985, and her property reverted to the state. For years, the hilltop sat quietly inside Austin Creek State Recreation Area -- two small residences and a historic barn on a ridgeline above the redwoods. In 2013, $443,245 in Proposition 84 Cultural Ste...

Image: MikeVdP | CC BY-SA 4.0