Living with an Arts & Crafts Legacy

By Julie Jaskol | June 16, 2026| Photography by Joshua Scheide

The Arts & Crafts movement was built on the tradition of fine craftsmanship. A reaction to the Industrial Revolution beginning in the 18th century, the movement prized natural materials crafted by hand into things of simple beauty, using traditional techniques rather than machines.

Even then, it was a challenging proposition, as mass-produced goods began to flood the market. In today’s digital age upholding the legacy is even harder. But some families are managing to carry the torch, continuing the work of previous generations while pursuing their own personal vision.

Sometimes their work is an unexpected detour from the path they thought they would take. Sometimes it is the expression of a lifelong passion.

Frequently it provides an opportunity to come to terms with a parent, grandparent, or great-great-grandparent, even if they are long gone. And it is a quest to live up to and strengthen the legacy they’ve been given. Here are four stories of individuals making Arts & Crafts family traditions their own.

David Judson is the fifth generation of Judsons to run the stained-glass studio founded by his great- great- grandfather more than 125 years ago. He never intended to join the family business. “It was the last thing I wanted to do,” he said. He studied abroad, went into international relations and worked for the State Department. “It was totally different, moving from a small family business to a huge corporate environment.”

When his father died at age 61, David came back to help his mother and brother keep the studio running. He found he loved working creatively with artists, and enjoyed the challenge of managing a small, family-owned enterprise.

Decades later, David still runs the business in the same house built by his great-great-grandfather, painter and professor William Lees Judson, and his three sons along the edge of the Arroyo Seco in the Garvanza neighborhood near Highland Park in Los Angeles.

Judson Studios’ building, constructed in 1911 after the original 1897 structure burned down, bears the inscription “We Can” over the doorway, and served as the headquarters of the Arroyo Guild of Fellow Crafters, headed by William Lees Judson and scholar George Wharton James.

Now a historic monument, its mazelike rooms and hallways are lined with shelves and cubbyholes holding jewel-like pieces of glass. Workers cut, polish, and join them, fitting them into designs laid out on huge tables.

Set at the end of a long driveway, lined by trees and a lawn with a picnic table, the building “is part of who we are, part of the experience of working with us,” David said. The family recently renovated the exterior and, after considerable research and consideration, changed the color. “It might seem trivial, but that was very emotional,” he said.

It wasn’t the only change David has made over the years. He opened a second, more modern facility, and adopted aspects of technology that made sense. “Moving from paper to tech was done consciously,” he said. “Whatever tech can do to help us get there, let’s do it to deliver the highest-quality product, as long as you’re maintaining the original intent.”

And while stained glass windows for churches used to be Judson Studios’ bread and butter, churches “are not a growth industry,” he said. Recent projects have included Seattle's Sound Transit bus stations, a Wyoming monastery, restoration of the U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel, a French fashion brand's new flagship store, and Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel, along with modern art pieces and residential commissions.

In addition to shifting markets, David had to adapt to a changing workforce. When he took over the business, his staff consisted of Eastern European artisans who were at retirement age. “I’ve been trying to expose people to what we do here and demonstrate that it’s a viable art form,” he said. He’s hired designers from art schools, and workers from a variety of other trades.

Under his leadership, the 12-person shop has grown to 27, and after a period of struggling to maintain cash flow, gained a stability that has allowed David to feel like he could try new things.

But all within the Judson Studios legacy. “We’re a 100-year-old tradition but we’re only as good as our last product,” he said. “We have a reputation and a cachet that it’s up to us to maintain.”

Currently, David’s son Ben is working in the studio while going to college. He would be the sixth generation to take on the family business, if that’s the direction he decides to go.

Despite the constraints inherent in taking on a 125-year-old company with strong roots in the community and high expectations, David still feels the satisfaction of creating a tangible product and continuing to grow the business.

“There’s something to be said about fitting your personal identity within a legacy,” he said. “It’s challenging in a lot of ways. You’ve been given a gift, but it has also set a bar.”

Mei-Ling Hubbard joined her mother’s company, Pasadena Craftsman Tile, the old-fashioned way: indentured servitude. “I had to work off the loan she gave me to buy a car,” Hubbard said with a laugh. Like David Judson, she found unexpected satisfaction in the work. “I never wanted to do anything my mother did,” Mei-Ling, a graphic artist with fine arts and interior architecture degrees, said. “But I realized I liked working with my hands more than a computer.”

And much to her surprise, she liked working with her mother, artist Cha-Rie Tang, who launched her company making authorized replicas of Ernest Batchelder tiles from original molds and has since branched out into her—and Mei-Ling’s—own designs.

“Growing up we had a more contentious mother-daughter relationship but over the years of working together we’re extremely close now,” Mei-Ling said. “She’s an excellent teacher. Instead of being prescriptive she’d allow me to experiment and fail. I’d try something and realize the way she’d been doing it was the right way.”

In some ways, Mei-Ling contends with both the legacy of her mother and prominent tilemaker Ernest Batchelder, whose Arts & Crafts-inspired tiles appeared in homes across the country in the early 20th century and during the late 1990s and early 2000s when people were rediscovering Arts & Crafts. Lately they have once again been in growing demand.

“Batchelder was the entry point for my mom to start making tile,” Mei-Ling said. Tang was given a set of original Batchelder molds by a friend who’d discovered them while cleaning out his mother’s home. Tang started experimenting with tile-making and eventually sought permission from Batchelder’s estate to reproduce his tiles. Her first commission was for a fireplace in a home designed by legendary architects Greene & Greene. As her tile-making took off, her business expanded and although Pasadena Craftsman Tile stays true to the Arts & Crafts spirit, its styles are not limited to Arts & Crafts.

“I grew up in a Craftsman home in Pasadena, my grandparents had a Craftsman home in Sonoma. I grew up with the vernacular in my psyche,” Mei-Ling said. “But I have a much more modern streak than I get credit for—it’s frustrating when people think our tile can only be in a Craftsman home.” Today their work appears in homes, businesses, and public art commissions throughout California.

In the 10 years since Mei-Ling began working with her mother, the company has grown. They operate two studios, and trade clients back and forth depending on their strengths. “We come at this from different directions. I’m more methodical, she’s experiential,” Mei-Ling explained. “She was an architect and is a self-taught ceramicist and I come from a much more formal fine arts education.”

But both approach the work with a firm commitment to craft. “Everything is really laboriously made by the human hand at all touchpoints,” Mei-Ling said. “We draw in wet clay and carve over a couple of weeks. We get a lot of value and satisfaction out of it. Neither one of us wants to get to the point where we’re no longer making things.”

That’s particularly important now. “We’re entering the age of AI, where we’re removing humanity from our experience,” she said. “Everything’s mediated with screens and algorithms and what we do really grounds things in the human hand.”

Ultimately, she’d like to grow the business to the point where they could hire a couple of full-time employees. She anticipates her mother will continue “until she drops,” jokes Mei-Ling. “She’d rather be doing this than anything else. It’s something we have in common. We both have this drive for this company to make a mark and to really contribute to the preservation of historic architecture.”

Neither of them saw it coming. “It’s been a surprise for both of us—brings her a lot of joy to work with me and have me work with her,” Mei-Ling said. “Not something either she or I was groomed for, but it’s a natural extension of our family’s sensibilities and has kind of evolved organically out of our commitment to the hand and the human evidence in our materiality and decorative arts.”

William Joseph “Dard” Hunter (1883-1966) was the best-known artisan to emerge from the Roycroft community of crafters founded by Elbert Hubbard in the late 19th century. Deeply influenced by William Morris and the Vienna Secessionists, he designed and illustrated Hubbard’s extremely successful magazines, essays, books, and pamphlets, distributed throughout the world. After leaving Roycroft he went on to become a master papermaker, printer, typeface designer, and bookmaker, while also working in metal and leaded glass. His impact on American craft was so great that Sherwin Wiliams even named a color after him, a dark green with yellow undertones known as Dard Hunter Green.

He did not leave behind a business to run, but he did leave a towering legacy, which his grandson Dard Hunter III has worked to maintain. “I have never considered his legacy a burden,” he said. “My career has been driven by an attempt to provide a greater awareness of the accomplishments of my father and grandfather in American decorative arts, historic preservation, and the handcrafts they were so devoted to.”

He does that from Dard Hunter Studios in Ohio, an 1830s canal-era warehouse where he sells tiles, prints, jewelry, and other items either designed by his grandfather or inspired by his work. Dard mills the frames by hand. The studio also serves as a local source for hard-to-find architectural mouldings in his historic community. He is at ease pursuing his own art within his grandfather’s tradition. “The common thread connecting all the generations in the Hunter family has been a passion for historic architecture and the preservation of it,” he said.

In fact, he lives in Mountain House, the 1850s Ohio home his grandfather purchased in 1919, where he lived and operated the Mountain House Press. His father, Dard Hunter, Jr., lived and worked there too, joining his father at the press. A graduate of the curatorial program at Winterthur, the Delaware museum, library, and garden devoted to the decorative arts, he served as curator of the Adena Mansion and Gardens in Chillicothe. He also wrote a two-volume biography of his father and amassed an unrivaled archive of papermaking history.

“Losing my father to heart disease when I was 19 provided focus and direction to all aspects of my life,” Dard said. “My father had an unwavering devotion to his father's life and work and that same devotion has been my beacon for navigating the challenges a business can bring.”  

For Hunter, the rewards of stewarding his family’s legacy has been the opportunity to meet people who are similarly inspired by the work, and who regularly gathered at shows and conferences throughout the country several years ago to celebrate Arts & Crafts. “The greatest joy has been the opportunity to meet, and in many cases, become friends with thousands of customers over the course of my career,” Dard said. “We could not have succeeded without the support of so many people.”

Craig Richard never wanted to be an SOB—son of the boss.

“My dad drilled it into me: ‘They’re going to assume that you won’t work as hard, that you’re riding daddy’s coattails,’” Craig recalled. He's the president of Old California, a lighting and home accessories company his father founded in 1989.

Initially, he had no intention of following his father into the business. “I didn’t like working for my dad during my teenage years,” he said. “I didn’t like the pressure.”

But some of his buddies had started to work in the factory, and eventually he joined them. The prospect of running the business was always there. “But my dad made it very clear that if I wanted it, I had to earn it. He would not sacrifice the company to make me feel good about myself.”

Old California produced lighting for restaurants, hotels, stores, “everything my dad could get his hands on,” Craig said, including old-fashioned wagon-wheel chandeliers for steakhouses. The company’s first historic recreation was ‘Sutter’s Mill,’ a Gold-Rush-era mining lantern.

“The original concept behind the name Old California was my dad’s, inspired by the history of the Gold Rush and the reason people came to California, bringing all this diversity of humanity and architecture with them,” Craig said. “We could make a product line out of every style. He chose Arts & Crafts as a second product line. There was an interesting world of customers served by trade shows where you can get directly to the homeowners, and there were wonderful publications serving that community. Seemed like a good market.”

And it was. Old California rode the wave of interest in Arts & Crafts, becoming known for their meticulous craftsmanship, attention to detail, and ability to design and execute fixtures that would fit existing pieces in historic homes, including Pasadena’s landmark Gamble House, designed by Greene & Greene.

Over the years, the company stopped using outside vendors and began to handcraft their products in their Orange, California factory, reflecting the Arts & Crafts ethos.

But eventually the interest in Arts & Crafts style ebbed; the trade shows faded away and the magazines folded or cut back their publications. “We were riding the revival of popularity around Arts & Crafts, and we got stuck,” Craig said. “Our desire to get into Mission and Spanish Revival and other styles got thwarted because we had too much work filling the demand for Arts & Crafts.”

The financial downturn of 2008 hit the company hard, and the relationship between father and son had grown increasingly fraught. “All through my 20s I deferred to my dad’s knowledge and authority. I knew I didn’t know what I was doing and I needed to listen to someone who’d been in the industry for decades,” Craig said. “The friendship was good, the early years were very fun. We started having tension once I got into my 30s. I started to spread my wings and feel like I knew better because my manufacturing knowledge had surpassed his, and it went to my head a little bit.”

After some rocky years, Tom Richard named his son president and reluctantly stepped away from the company. It may have been necessary, but it was wrenching for everyone. The family focused on healing their relationships and Craig focused on strengthening the business.

Over the last six years, Old California has doubled its size and regained its footing. So has the Arts & Crafts market, which has nearly reached its previous size. Craig is seizing the opportunity to pursue his father’s original vision and add onto it, developing product lines in Spanish Revival, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern in addition to the Arts & Crafts and Prairie School styles it’s known for.

“Part of that is creating community,” Craig said. “We saw the Arts & Crafts community fade away and we’re trying to rebuild it. We want to work with other craftsmen and artisans to meet some of that need and help everyone thrive together. We love to see a community that grows.”

Toward that end Old California sponsors events, supports historical societies, hosts tours, and participates in discussions nationwide about craft and historical architecture.

Back in the factory, Craig’s son Tommy is hard at work learning how not to be an SOB. “He’s gotten all the same speeches that I found extremely valuable: If you want it you gotta earn it,” Craig said.

Despite Craig’s rocky transition into leadership, he hopes Tommy does decide to make the family business his own. “I would love it if my son would do what I did. It would warm my heart.”

He’s trying to create a business that is more self-sustaining, nurturing capable staff so it doesn’t revolve around a single person. “I want to make enough changes so that when I tell him to take the time to enjoy the moment I can mean it,” he said.

But the time for enjoying the moment is yet to come. For now, Craig is keeping his son’s nose to the grindstone. “He needs the hard lesson at this age,” Craig said. “He’s got more to learn. I hope he keeps working, learning and growing constantly.”

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