Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village, Folk art environment in Simi Valley, California, US.
Grandma Prisbrey's Bottle Village is an art environment in Simi Valley, California, built by Tressa "Grandma" Prisbrey from the 1950s to the 1970s. It holds 16 buildings and structures made of glass bottles and other discards, among them the Round House, Cleopatra's Bedroom, the Dolls Head Shrine and the Leaning Tower of Bottle Village, linked by a mosaic sidewalk. A small white-framed building has a facade set with round green and clear bottle ends around a white-panelled door, and a conical bottle-covered spire stands to its left.
Tressa Prisbrey began construction of this glass bottle architecture in 1956 at age 60 and continued working on it through 1972. The site emerged during the postwar era when recycled materials offered both practical solutions and artistic possibilities.
The structures show how Prisbrey transformed discarded materials into artwork that was completely unconventional for its time. Visitors can see how she used glass bottles and found objects as an artistic medium, demonstrating an early personal commitment to reusing materials long before it became common practice.
Bottle Village has been closed to tours since 1984, so visits are not currently possible; the property is not open to the public. The 1994 Northridge earthquake, centred about eight miles away, badly damaged the structures, and repair funding was refused, leaving the site unrestored. The parcel covers roughly 0.13 hectares on Cochran Street in Simi Valley.
Prisbrey began collecting pencils as a hobby and amassed 17,000 of them; finding a place to store the collection set off the building project. The doll house, a separate structure, held 600 dolls, and she went in daily to dress some of them.
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