Yesterday we were honored to welcome the owners of Heath Ceramics, Robin and Cathy, as well as their head of Sales, Christina. Heath and Fireclay Tile enjoy a very similar history. Edith Heath founded Heath in 1948, mostly focused on pottery and then started later to make tile. Paul Burns, our Founder and Chief Ceramicist, learned the art of tile from his Uncle Chester, who owned Stonelight Tile, another legendary California tile manufacturer. Fireclay and Heath actually go quite a ways back, in fact, one of our kilns is a kiln from an old Heath Factory in the mid-west (no longer in operation). We had the chance to visit Heath earlier in the year, and it was great to be able to show off the great work that our team does.

Robin, Cathy, Christina (Heath) and Paul

The tour consisted of some time at our ceramics factory in Aromas, CA, where we showed the Heath team everything that one would find in our Manufacturing Video where we highlight how we make each and every unique order. Much more fun than any part of the tour, though, was when we challenged the three to a Cuerda Seca "paint-off"!

Robin, Cathy and Christina paint Cuerda Seca decorative tiles

We then headed up to San Jose to check out our Factory Showroom as well as our Crush 100% Recycled Glass Tile manufacturing operation. 

All in all it was a great day full of many stories of tile manufacturing and some fun new ideas. If you haven't had a chance to check out the Heath website, visit http://www.heathceramics.com

.

Bella Vista Tile!

By Kate Fox

Old-world beauty and elegance is something you don’t necessarily have to travel to Italy or Rome to see. Nor do you need to travel to Turkey or to the jeweled-like domed buildings of Saint Petersburg, Russia. In fact, you may be surprised to find that such craft and beauty can be seen right here in the US. In Brasstown, situated in the western part of North Carolina, this old-world beauty and elegance is crafted from the imagination. It is at Bella Vista Tile one can see the most beautiful, elegant, and uniquely crafted tile of today.

 

 

Bella Vista Tile was founded in 2003 by artists Lisa and James TeviaClark. All of their tiles are hand-made and painted with wood-ash glazes. The bas-relief designs offer a unique surface appearance and add to the true beauty of each tile.

Some designs are shell-like in appearance,

 

 

while others resemble precious  jewels.

 

 

When you first hold one of these tiles, your eyes widen. You suddenly find yourself examining every bit of its surface-- you’re drawn in by the deep saturation of color, the surface texture, and its jewel-like presence.
I have to admit, I felt like a kid in a candy shop when I first saw this tile. I was lucky enough to have met Lisa and James TeviaClark recently at “Clay Expectations: A Festival of Tiles and Mosaics,” in Oakland, on September 12th. While I was surrounded by beautiful tile from all around, I couldn’t help but continuously glance over to Bella Vista Tile’s tile display. I would walk over, look at all the tiles, pick one up, and be anxious to see more.

Lisa and James were more than sweet. They told me about their lives as artists and the creation of Bella Vista Tile. They have traveled all over the United States, and their tiles are exhibited in showrooms-- from east coast to west. You may find a complete listing of showrooms hosting Bella Vista Tile on the company’s website, http://www.bellavistatile.com. It is here that you may also find the TeviaClark’s biography and gallery photographs.

 

 

As always, here at Fireclay Tile, we are pleased meet any great tile artist. It was a pleasure meeting you,  Lisa and James.

We love your work!

Janet Ontko, Featured Artist from “Clay Expectations: A Festival of Tiles and Mosaics”
By Kate Fox

There’s nothing better to come across than a great piece of art-- art that is calming and reminds you of home. From bird houses, to sculptures, to little mouse card holders, the collection from Janet Ontko Clay Forms will draw you in and charm your hearts. Fireclay Tile was very blessed to have met Janet Ontko recently at “Clay Expectations: A Festival of Tiles and Mosaics,” which was held on September 12th, in downtown Oakland. We had neighboring tables at this event, and upon meeting, became very good friends.

Janet Ontko started Janet Ontko Clay Forms in 1995, and for the past fifteen years, she has showcased her work in wholesale and retail shows across America. Her work can be seen in galleries and museums throughout the US and Japan. She has won numerous awards for her work and has been published in both magazine and newspaper print. In addition, Janet’s tiles have been featured on the set of “Martha Stewart Living.”

Janet’s inspiration for her work comes from a combination of natural forms and vintage ceramics. She enjoys interpreting nature in a creative way and develops her work for the home and garden. She has done both commercial and civic projects as well. Janet opens her studio to the public twice a year to showcase new designs, and her studio is open by appointment throughout the year.

You can see all of Janet’s work and visit her online store at http://www.janetontko.com. As always, we are pleased to meet any great tile artist. We are very happy to have met Janet Ontko, and we wish her the very best of luck in her future tile making!

Note: This is a 3-part blog that includes insights into three other ceramicists we loved meeting at the Clay Expectations Event in Oakland.

By Kate Fox

This past weekend, Fireclay Tile participated in what only could be called a tile-lover’s dream. Imagine a building adorned with tile. As you’re admiring the beautifully tiled entrance, your eyes are drawn to the tiled columns on either side. Then as you gaze up, you notice the tile extends to the very top-- and you can’t help but step back in ah. The building in which I speak of is the Historic Howden building of Oakland, California-- a building that showcases the true beauty and uniqueness of ceramic tile.

It was here that the Tile Heritage Foundation held “Clay Expectations: A Festival of Tiles and Mosaics” this past Sunday. Tiles artists and artisans alike gathered inside its doors and exhibited truly the most beautiful tile around--not one the same. Lectures and a tour were given, along with clay and mosaic workshops for children. The day was filled with excitement and laughter, and artists’ stories of their own work and experiences. Everyone had a different story to tell and unique things to share. It was a day not to be missed, and Fireclay Tile was very happy to be a part of it.

In thanks to the Tile Heritage Foundation for hosting this event and all the participants involved, Fireclay Tile would like to feature some of our favorite tile artists from the showcase in our upcoming blogs.

Look forward to reading about Janet Ontko of Clay Forms, Justine Tot Tatarsky of Art on Tile, and Lisa and James TeviaClark of Bella Vista Tile. Many thanks again to a great day of tile and thanks for your support!

By Kate Fox

It’s not too often one gets the opportunity to be completely immersed in a world of tile-- to be surrounded by its history, its beauty, its unique craft. For those of you who know the Historic Howden Building in Oakland, California, you may have an idea of the beauty to which I speak of. For those of you who don’t, let me just quote from Mosaic Art Now and say it’s “a glittering, shimmering, jewelry box of a tile showroom.” Unique in many ways, this building, which was built in 1925, houses a showcase of tile-- and it is in this very place that the Tile Heritage Foundation presents “Clay Expectations: A Festival of Tiles and Mosaics” this Sunday, September 12th, 10-5 pm.

This fundraising event will bring together the work of tile artisans and artists alike all to be showcased and exhibited in “support of the Tile Heritage Foundation’s ongoing archival and cataloging programs.” Accompanying the presentation of tile and mosaic art, tours and lectures will be given, along with children’s workshops on clay and mosaics. Amongst the tile artisans and artists attending, Fireclay Tile is thrilled to be a participant in this Sunday’s event and share our unique 24-year-old tile history. We will be showcasing our sustainable, handmade, local tile, specifically our hand-painted Cuerda Seca tiles, which we have been making here at Fireclay Tile for over 15 years. Please join us and witness the true beauty and uniqueness of tile from all around and learn about its fascinating history. It will truly be an event not to be missed-- so bring your family along to this spectacular showcase and have some fun!

For more information, please visit http://www.tileheritage.org/TileHeritage-home.html or visit http://mosaicartnow.blogspot.com/.

Details:

Sunday, September 12th, 10-5 pm

Historic Howden Building

17th & Webster Sts., Oakland, California

Admission: $5 ($4 with this notice)

 

Lectures:

Tiles Out of the Blue: Creating Beauty from the Earth

California Decorative Tiles, 1900-1930

By Joseph A. Taylor 11-noon Sunday, Sept. 12th

The Tiles of California Faience

Berkeley, California

1913-1959

By Kirby William Brown 1-2pm Sunday, Sept. 12th

Southern California Mosaic Fantasy Worlds:

Towers, Totems and Tiles

By Lillian Sizemore 3-4 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 12th

Tour:

Tiles and Terra Cotta in Uptown Oakland

A Walking Tour with Riley Doty

Presented by Oakland Heritage Alliance

12:30 – 3 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 12th

Separate charge: $10

Workshop for Kids -Mosaic

Elizabeth Raybee will orchestrate a “drop-in for

kids” (of all ages) to make mini-mosaics. Among

the choices will be mosaic pins or fridge magnets

made in jar lids or anchovy/sardine cans. Lots of

fun and glitter! Everyone can take away a

finished piece. Elizabeth Raybee is an

internationally recognized mosaic artist and

teacher.

Workshop for Kids - Clay

Tile Heritage is also providing a supervised Kids’

Clay Table all day with well known ceramists &

teachers: Irene de Watteville, Dale Wiley, Lisa

Cox, Chere Mah and Colette Crutcher. This will

be an informal setting with lots of clay tools,

stamps and molds as well as guidance and

demonstration by the teachers. Everyone can take

home what they make!

SF Chronicle: Mosaic artist Pippa Murray an intricate blend

Many thanks to Lisa Hix for publishing this article on local Bay Area mosaic artist Pippa Murray (article reposted below). In a strange coincidence for Fireclay Tile, we only recently learned of Pippa and her amazing work when she visited our tile showroom in San Jose earlier this week. Pippa came in to meet with Paul, our founder and Chief Ceramicist, to discuss a new spa project she is working on.

We admire Pippa's work and her commitment to embodying old world techniques to satisfy modern day clients. Like Fireclay Tile, Pippa embraces locally manufactured products and goes to great lengths to deliver solutions her clients adore. Though generally working with stone, Pippa has done work with ceramic tile, which is what her current project calls for. We look forward to working with Pippa and alwyas love meeting local artists!

Mosaic artist Pippa Murray an intricate blend

August 26, 2010

In her workroom in a Sausalito studio, mosaic artist Pippa Murray picks up a strip of off-white marble, places it on a hardie, and strikes it with a hammer. She picks up the square and keeps chopping it until she has a little slither. When making a floor, a backsplash, or an artwork, she goes through this slow, deliberate process, cutting hundreds, sometimes thousands, of little pieces by hand.

"It's probably one of the most labor-intensive things I know," says Murray's "right-hand man," Daniel Purbrick, a fellow mosaicist who's been assisting her for four years. "I like that about it."

The pieces in most stone mosaics installed in homes today, like those offered by architect favorite Ann Sacks, are mass-produced in factories, cut by saws, lasers or water jets. Murray offers something unique: Personalized mosaics for floors, kitchens and bathrooms made using methods developed in ancient times. Of course, she doesn't make perfect little squares, but "that gives it soul," she says.

Her work, though, is often sleek and modern, with fluid lines and smooth finishes, the intricate stonework barely discernible from afar. For one client, Murray and her crew installed a tan stone floor with a sinewy line of greenish stones that ran through the entire house. For a bathroom in the 2009 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, she repeated the swirling-line motif, with the mosaic rocks curling up the wall in places, like a few blades of grass. In spiral patterns resembling nautilus shells, Murray has employed elaborate patterns of tiny stones that seem to wrap around and contain the larger tiles like a ribbon.

Purbrick works diligently, smoothing stone pieces in Murray's "dirty" workroom. He's surrounded by big crates of construction castoffs and rock recovered from slab yards, and jars full of shimmering colored glass, a special Italian glass made for mosaics called smalti.

"We like stone," says Murray, who rarely uses ceramic tile. "It's an honest material. It's the same thing all the way through, and it's nature made. It's what builds all those old buildings I like so much."

When a client suggested they try water-jet cuts, Murray had sample pieces made but "it just doesn't hit the heart strings."

"The design might be from hand, but then it's got to go into the program to get that line, and you lose something," Purbrick says. "It didn't look like our work, that sample. It just looked too cold or hard. We do a lot of finishing on the stone, rounding everything, and it becomes really tactile and smooth and has a really nice glow to it."

Murray's "clean studio," a few steps away, is an elegant space with endless eye candy. From her interior design work, she has mosaic samples, stunning watercolors made as a preview, and a bulletin board showing photos of her floor-installing process. There is art, too, like the intricate three-panel wall piece of a lush pomegranate tree, made of tiny hand-shaped brightly colored stone fit tightly together. Toward the ceiling, there's a real tree branch, with mosaic bubbles clinging to it like pearl-crusted wasp burrows. And on the ground, small square-like mosaic stones known as tesserae wrap themselves round small boulders and large rocks like scarves.

When she was growing up, Murray's art historian father, who specialized in French gothic architecture, took her all over Europe, where she gawked at cathedral steps and pieces hanging in museums.

But it wasn't until she was an art student at Columbia University that she found her calling. During the summer of 1993, she took a job on an archaeological dig in Crete, Greece, where she drew pictures of the pottery and small finds they unearthed. Since she was the resident artist, the archaeologists asked her to create a pebble mosaic for the dig house. Made from pebbles collected from the beach, the 9-foot-wide piece was Murray's first mosaic, incorporating motifs from the pots she was drawing.

"This really captured my imagination, because it was art, it was sculptural, it was ancient, it was haptic, it was heavy, it required skills," she says.

She got a master's degree in Greco-Roman mosaics at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she studied the ancients' designs and process in depth. After that, she came to California to get a master's of fine arts at California College of the Arts. It wasn't long before her reputation as a mosaic expert grew, and she started getting commissions, from private clients and even the Bay Area Discovery Museum.

In 1999, the late Spanish designer Victor Carrasco flew her to his home to make pieces that looked like Roman artifacts. When she was done, Carrasco asked the curator at the Seville Museum to come over and date them. "He did," Murray says with a smile. "Second Century Eastern Empire."

This is what makes Murray so rare: She carries this deep knowledge of ancient traditions, she's got all the technical skills of a craftsperson, and she has the perspective of a fine artist, says Lillian Sizemore, a mosaic artist and art historian who works with Murray as a business consultant.

"What's unique about Pippa is that, yes, she has a classical background, but she can take that, work with a client and get something that's beautiful and fits well into a modern setting," Sizemore says. "For example, I live in a 1963 Eichler. It's very modern, very austere, and I could put a modern mosaic in here, and still, it would fit. And that's what Pippa is really good at seeing, how to use the medium and use her skill set."

While one might assume these custom mosaics would be pricey, Murray says she can work within a limited budget. Certainly, she can match the price of installing mass-produced stone tile work, which runs about $250-$400 a square foot.

"I do bring the whole gamut between being competitive with what you get at a tile place to much more, because I can do things that are much more intricate and special," Murray says. "In that price, we always include the whole thing from design to installation to sealing to maintenance."

Outside of private homes, her work can be seen at the Bay Area Discovery Museum's 800-square-foot octopus-wrapped compass. She also had art in last May's Decorator Showcase and she's working on pieces for the Global School Silicon Valley in San Jose and the Sonoma Horse Park in Petaluma.

As an artist, Murray, who lives on a teak sailboat with her husband and 4-year-old daughter, says she loves working with clients because they present her with challenges, like how to incorporate a dark-colored 50 million-year-old gar fish fossil with light-colored travertine tile or how to maintain a pattern in a piece of marble slab for a shower.

"Since it's a collaboration, there's their thoughts, what they want, what they need, their budget," she says. "Then there's what I'm coming with, what I think, what I like, what I can do with certain things. Instead of being in your studio alone, working on one thing, it takes you on paths you wouldn't expect.

"Every time I get us into doing something tricky again, and I'm in there putting it in I say, 'Daniel! The next time I talk us into doing something crazy, kick me!' But then we end up doing it again. It's fun to push yourself."