Situated on a hilltop 600 ft (180 m) above the Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve, Pond Farm began around 1939-40 when a San Francisco-based couple named Gordon and Jane Herr (architect and writer, respectively) acquired a portion of property called Rancho Del Lago or the Walker Ranch.

Inspired by such precedents as the Bauhaus, Eliel Saarinen’s Cranbrook Academy of Art, Black Mountain College, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin, the Herrs envisioned Pond Farm as an artists’ community that would in part support itself through summer workshops.

They raised a wide variety of livestock; planted fruit orchards, nut trees and vegetable gardens; and established several fish ponds.

Eventually, Marguerite Wildenhain ended up in California and (having explored other options) decided to join the Herrs’ Pond Farm Workshops.

She moved to Pond Farm in 1942, helped to put in water lines, established a garden, built a house and, working with Gordon Herr, restored and redesigned a barn that became her pottery workshop.

Franz would teach sculpture, while two other European artists who joined the colony in 1949, Trude Guermonprez and Victor Ries, taught weaving and metals, respectively.

In the words of Tim Tivoli Steele (the Herrs’ grandson), “In the end, the trait that all the artists had relied on to survive the war and follow their visions—the strength of their personalities—would also contribute to the demise of the Workshops.

Thereafter, a school and workshop on the site, called Pond Farm Pottery, were carried on by the community's only remaining artist, Bauhaus potter Marguerite Wildenhain, who continued to offer instruction through 1980.