Two towers in the woods
The house stands on 2.19 wooded acres in Edwardsville, with a forty-foot pool, a ceramics studio with a gallery above, a glass studio and a wood-fired kiln on the same land. Its main rooms sit under a cedar ceiling that rises nearly forty feet.
The listing describes two tower-like structures joined by interior bridges across four levels, shaped by the forms of Midwestern barns and silos. Outside, the taller tower carries four red-railed balconies up its gray siding, and the roofs are red standing-seam metal.
The main rooms
Exposed timber trusses cross the cedar roof, and a brick chimney forty feet high climbs through the middle of the house, stepped back in the way the listing calls ziggurat-inspired. The same stair-step form returns in the shelving and the fireplace surround. In the dining room a stepped wall of shelves carries large clay pots, a library runs along the mezzanine above, and a pendant by Ingo Maurer, tiers of Japanese washi paper, hangs over the living area.
Three sets of sliding glass doors open to the pond, and more open from the living room to the pool. The kitchen has Saltillo tile underfoot, a center island and a window backsplash over the trees; in the photographs the counters are turquoise against pale birch.
The entry level holds a bedroom, a full bath and a den with built-ins. The primary bedroom is on the third level with an antique built-in cabinet, a second bedroom and a bath, and a fourth bedroom is at the top. Every bedroom has sliding glass doors to the trees.
The studios and the kiln
Behind the house is the part no other house has. The ceramics studio has production space below and a gallery or showroom above. An anagama-style wood-fired kiln is built into the hillside, designed for large collaborative firings that, the listing says, have welcomed ceramic artists from around the world. A separate glass studio of cement and metal has a furnace, a glory hole and an annealer, and a covered bridge walkway connects the two-car garage to the lower level.
Dan Anderson's house
Daniel J. Anderson, who lived and died in Edwardsville (1945 to 2023), gave this address as his own on his curriculum vitae. He taught ceramics at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville from 1970 to 2002, trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, and made finely detailed pieces of water towers and granaries that are held in the St. Louis Art Museum.
His obituary says that he and his wife Caroline built an art house and studio complex virtually adjacent to the university, with help from his brother David, and that dozens of figures in the American studio pottery movement came to make work in his anagama kiln. No architect is on record for the house.
