In a perfectionist’s script in translucent white on a teal surface, Joy Savage painted across the 10-foot-high, 8-foot-wide entrance to her studio in rhythmically placed arrangements, Gandhi’s belief that the most perilous traits to humanity are: “Knowledge without Character, Commerce without Morality, Politics without Principal, Science without Humanity, Wealth without Work, Pleasure without Conscience, Worship without Sacrifice.”

Savage was an artist of great acclaim, whose studio has the honor of being in the huge 1911 home she and her husband, Walter, bought in 1965.

It’s a modified Craftsman, the front porch so big and beautiful that the Pacific Grove Historical Society deemed it the best in town: tall ceiling, wide semi-circle center, columns, big window shared with the living room and windowed ends blocking any winds.

It’s a romantic setting on eight parcels (14,400 square feet), with the four-bed/four-bath house (between 3,300 and 3,700 square feet), meadow-like lawns (a big buck sleeps in the corner spot), fruit trees, redwood stands, a magnolia, a koi pond and – from the second floor – an envy-inducing view of the bay’s broad 180-degree curve from Seaside to the Santa Cruz mountains.

The Savages raised their three sons, Walt, Scott and Lance here. In the ’80s, the family added a west wing remarkable for myriad reasons, including its impressive size, large rooms, ample windows, and an absolute adherence to the original design/materials of the 1911 house. They used the same natural shingles (the whole exterior is now a soft yellow/white trim), plus precise re-creations of extended eaves, rafter tails and, extraordinarily, redwood gutters.

The wing faces the bay, then around to the back gardens. On the first floor Savage’s big studio has huge windows, bay views and rows of sunken lights. The room uses most of the width of the house, the remainder by the expansive full bath with original commode: bowl, oak tank, oak seat and lid.

Rooms facing the back garden include a sitting room (big window) with a most practical coat closet in an otherwise of-no-use alcove. An ingenious, likely-one-of-a-kind rack pulls down for hanging clothing, then is released back into the alcove like a Murphy bed into a wall.

Next to the sitting room is a spacious walk-in pantry (sink, big window, oodles of built-ins) opening to the formal dining room (big window) and kitchen beyond. The kitchen is little, the first room to face the side yard, and has a fairly rare old Comstock Castle four burner with ovens. (It’s a good candidate for remodeling.)

The dining room faces a wonderfully big living room with windows galore. It’s blessed with original long-grain fir, built-ins and big brick fireplace added after 1911. The room completes a circle begun in the foyer.

Within the foyer, the long-grain painted fir, original staircase climbs to the private rooms, where three original bedrooms meet the west wing’s to-sing-about master (originally an enclosed porch) with sitting room, bath and what one imagines to be the best of bay views in the house.

One would be mistaken, though. From the original master (English cast iron fireplace/surround), framed by unusually shaped French doors (matching barn-door-shaped shutters), open to a stupendous balcony, the roof of the front porch and therefore the full size and shape of it. Surely it takes action-figure self-control to willingly return inside.

The 180 degrees of bay, mountains, sky and air can seduce an otherwise reasonable person to stay, at one with the All Encompassing.

Price: $3,749,000228 1st St., Pacific Grove • Contact JR Rouse, JR Rouse Real Estate • 645-9696.