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Handpainted tiles and sinks offer artistic flair to homes
By Amy Golod
Imagine standing amid marsh reeds and herons, listening to the sound of water splashing. What if the water splashing isn't the result of fish or the wind, but of a faucet shooting water onto the floor of a bathtub?
Laila Montgomery, a Los Gatos artist, is decorating tiles with a wildlife motif for a client who is an avid bird watcher. Montgomery started her business, Handpainted Tiles & Sinks by Laila, when tiles someone painted in her own Los Gatos home left her unsatisfied. She realized she would enjoy creating this type of art and went to work, experimenting with glazes.
Montgomery says she prefers using China paints and low-fire glazes because they facilitate detail work. The thinly concentrated oil with which she mixes the glaze powder allows her to create the detail that thicker oils do not permit. Her 20 years of experience as a potter enable her to foresee the color transformations the glazes undergo after firing in the kilns.
"Everybody has a style. Mine is detail and color," she said.
When Montgomery first began hand painting ceramics, a red rose turned invisible after firing due to the amount of glaze Montgomery had applied. "Firing is the secret that makes it work," she said.
Montgomery's art background extends beyond the potter's wheel to include painting. She has taken classes in watercolors at West Valley College and in rosemarling, a traditional Norwegian art. Once or twice each year, Montgomery attends the Mendocino Art Center, where she learns more painting techniques.
"I paint watercolors for experience and pleasure because with tile painting, I paint what you want. With watercolors, I paint what I want," she said.
In her business, Montgomery's canvases are handmade pottery from Trent Pottery in Los Gatos or clients' pieces from hardware stores. Clients may also bring wallpaper, fabric samples or pictures for Montgomery to duplicate on tiles or sinks. Past projects have included fruits and vegetables on kitchen tiles and rainbow trout swimming around a sink bowl. Montgomery spends some of her time researching her subject in order to paint accurate features such as those of the rainbow trout.
Montgomery says she prefers to serve the Bay Area community. She paints at least three days each week, from morning to night and charges $250 to $2,500 per project. While she is working, Montgomery encourages clients to view the work to ensure that the finished product is what they envisioned.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
