After 80 years, a living museum hits the market

In Upper Nichols Canyon, a modest 1937 hillside house reflects a life organised around making. For nearly 80 years, it was the home and studio of Gertrud and Otto Natzler, whose ceramics helped shape the postwar West Coast craft movement. Light mattered here, not theatrically but precisely. It filtered through treetops to illuminate glaze tests, wheels and kilns, and later the careful documentation of thousands of works. Now offered for the first time in 80 years, the Natzler Residence is ready for a new resident.

The original house unfolds as a sequence of intimate rooms: living and dining spaces anchored by a fireplace, a compact kitchen lined with ceramic tiles glazed by Otto, and two bedrooms that evolved alongside their practice. Above the garage, a detached studio suite remains largely intact, preserving the conditions in which vessels were thrown and fired. In 1988, Otto added a two-storey extension inspired by alpine architecture, introducing a purpose-built photographic studio and darkroom below, with a vaulted primary suite above. Wraparound balconies stitch old and new together, opening views across the canyon.

The property backs onto the Briar Summit Open Space Reserve, securing long-term privacy and reinforcing the retreat-like setting that sustained decades of experimentation.