February 11, 2010 | filed under: Company News Debris Series
We love our dealers and particulary love when they say nice things about us. Here is a recent posting from Norberry Tile in Seattle about Fireclay.
January 15, 2010 | filed under: Claymonde Company News Debris Series Showroom/Boneyard Vitrail
Last week we were fortunate to have Daniel Cronin visit our Factory Showroom and Offices and take some incredible still photography of our products. You can view the entire set of product shots on our Flickr site
We loved all of his shots, and some of our favorites were as follows:
Basic 4x4 Field Tile (Debris Series)
Relief Debris Series Decorative (12x12)
Raised Vitrail Series Decorative (2 4x4s)
Cuerda Seca Tile (6x6)
Set of Field Tile
any many many more here...
About Daniel Cronin: Daniel lives in Portland, OR, but does work throughout the West Coast. His website has great representations of his work, and we think very highly of him.
December 29, 2009 | filed under: Bottlestone Company News Debris Series
GoSolar California, an effort sponsored by California’s Public Utilities Commission and Energy Commission, announced the winners of their 2nd annual sweepstakes recently. Fireclay participated in the event because we believe SO STRONGLY that California should be supporting solar, and offered a $5,000 product reward for one lucky winner.
The lucky winner is Joelle Hemming from Elk Grove, CA, and Joelle’s participation we are providing a not yet available BottleStone countertop and Fireclay Tile Debris Series backsplash, all with a retail value of up to $5,000. Our beautiful unique ceramic products made from recycled local waste materials are the perfect complement to Joelle’s kitchen, and we look forward to working with Joelle.
More to come later….
Thanks to Elizabeth Marlow and ProPose Marketing for making this happen, and to the California Public Utilities Commission for their efforts in making California GoSolar.
December 2, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series
Our friends Kevin and Aleida at Thread Collaborative conducted an interview with Paul at GreenBuild last month. We think they did a GREAT job highlighting why we love working at Fireclay and the mission of the company.
The post can be viewed here, and we have copied the text below:
stories of sustainability: Fireclay Tile
by kevin, on December 2nd, 2009
For anyone unfamiliar with Fireclay Tile, they are a manufacturer of wonderful handcrafted artisan tiles located in San Jose CA. I say artisan because their approach, character, manner, and products are more aligned with old-world ideals than modern technology. Just before the exhibition floor opened at Greenbuild 2009, Aleida and I had the pleasure of sitting down with Paul Burns, the founder and chief ceramicist of Fireclay Tile, to talk about company history and personal back story.
Paul started the business with three partners in 1986 but tile production runs in the family. He learned the trade from his uncle when he was just ten years old. Paul is a tinkerer and problem solver at heart. He describes himself as a scavenger interested in efficiency rather than someone with hard core environmental concerns. Although many of his products are composed of recycled material, their creation has come about due to Paul’s impulse to fashion unique solutions and uncover value where others only see useless waste. He seems to thrive in situations where others have tried and failed.
A key year for the company came in 1998 when an adjacent business, one of the largest rock quarries in Northern California, approached Paul with an intriguing challenge — what to do with a by-product of their asphalt gravel production process. After more than eighty years of production the company had accumulated a tremendous quantity of waste rock dust and had yet to develop a use for it. This kind of task seemed perfectly suited to Paul’s disposition, but after a year of research he was still struggling to convert the substance into a viable commercial product. With so much of it available, Paul’s first inclination was to use as much as possible and produce a tile made with a very high percentage of the rock dust. But he discovered the same shortfall as others before him — the stuff was hard to work with.
Another year was spent approaching the issue from a different angle. Instead of maximizing the dust content but creating a terribly unattractive product, he decided to pull back on the dust to determine the point where he could produce an attractive and marketable tile. The final mix used twenty-six percent, and the Debris Series tile was born. That line now also includes twenty-six percent post-consumer glass and six percent spent abrasive from pipe sand blasting. Today the formulation has more than sixty percent recycled content with approximately forty percent being post-consumer.
As Paul describes it, “the thing about clay and ceramics is that there’s flexibility in the chemicals and formulas so they easily accept the use of other materials into the mix.” Although I knew a bit about ceramic processes prior to this interview, that was new to me. He went on to say, “once you fire the product, you purify it. If impurities exist, even bacteria or other harmful compounds, they are made inert when fired.” One example of this was when another local company was discontinuing the use of lead-based glazes for ceramic products. Fireclay Tile mixed the toxic glaze into the body of their tile and essentially sealed the lead, rendered it harmless, and diverted it away from potential environmental harm had it ended up in a landfill.
Armed with knowledge accumulated through the two years required to bring the Debris Series to market, Paul started looking at other opportunities to utilize other waste material. The post consumer recycled glass used in the Debris tiles is actually a waste material rather than recycled. Super fine dust is created during the crushing process after used glass bottles are collected, sorted, and ground into cullet. The cullet is then most commonly used to create new glass, but the dust isn’t typically employed in the same manner. Its small size makes it difficult to clean and sort so it rarely ends up in recycled glass, but it can be used as a filler material for other products. Fireclay’s Bottlestone counter top line are slabs composed of eighty percent waste glass dust.
Other companies have also approached Paul with interesting challenges for utilizing specific waste products produced by their businesses, but we were sworn to secrecy and will hopefully be allowed to give a sneak peek when the products get closer to launch. But I have to say that one in particular sounds really interesting. I can’t wait to see how it progresses.
In addition to developing new products, Paul and his team are constantly looking to maximize their efficiency by using waste from their own facility as raw material for tile products. They’ve started looking into a take-back program, but may limit the scope regionally. Fireclay is very locally minded and is concerned about the overall environmental impact of a product requiring long distance delivery for limited reclaim potential. As an example, the current formulation of Bottlestone limits recycle content of waste Bottlestone to just five percent. They are working on how to increase that number.
Similar to a take-back program is an interesting test they’re currently running. They’re working with the cities of San Jose, San Francisco, and Santa Cruz to collect as many toilets, sinks, and tubs as possible - they need nearly ten truckloads - to use in the Debris series. Paul says early tests are producing unexpected results. One would presume with so much white vitreous china ground up and added to the clay body, the tile color would be light, but instead it’s dark and gray. The fixtures are pulverized to create a grog which gets mixed in with new clay. Since the grog has already been fired once, it’s far more stable. It’s still too early to tell where this experiment is headed, but I’ll report on it as soon as I hear or see anything.
You would think that Paul’s degree in science from UC Berkley would serve him well with the kind of production problems he’s routinely solving when developing new products, but he likes to say that all the science he uses he learned in high school. With his easygoing nature, it’s easy to hear that and believe him too quickly. But after just thirty minutes with him I get the sense that some serious brain power is being applied.
Although we have never worked together directly, I have been involved with a number of projects where Fireclay Tile products were used and I’ve always been impressed. I can easily recommend this company to anyone interested in using environmentally favorable materials. Do you have any experience with Paul and/or Fireclay? We would love to hear about it.
Thank you, Paul, for your time.
November 10, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series
We’re attending GreenBuild in Phoenix, AZ this week and will be showcasing our Debris Series at booth 4910.
We had a great time at the show last year and look forward to a great show this year. Paul and Eric from Fireclay are on site, so please stop by and say hello if you are in the area.
For fun we put together this little video of us putting our booth together. The joys of tradeshow setup!
Enjoy!
November 2, 2009 | filed under: Claymonde Company News Debris Series Showroom/Boneyard Vitrail
In an effort to better communicate our history, product offering, and product details, we have launched a new video series that we will be adding to constantly. We are really excited for this next step fo rour company, and hope it allows you to learn a bit more about us in your quest for beautiful ceramic products!
Some of our first videos include:
History of Fireclay Tile
Overview of our Debris Series of Recycled Ceramic Tile
Overview of our Claymonde Series: Sheets of Color
Boneyard Showcase
Overview of Saltillo Offering
We look forward to unveiling LOTS more content overtime. If you have suggestions of things you’d like to see, email us and let us know your thoughts!
Thanks!
- The Fireclay Team
September 1, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series Showroom/Boneyard
At Fireclay we love food, and we love making our beautiful, recycled Debris Series tile for great food establishments.
Just this month, a wonderful new restaurant - Bocanova - has opened in the heart of Oakland’s Jack London Square. “Pan-American cuisine is the blending of culinary currents from Europe and the Americas while using the best and freshest local ingredients,” comments Bocanova-Executive Chef, Rick Hackett. Beyond the exquisite cuisine, the owners of Bocanova were committed to using sustainable materials and asked their architect, Michael Guthrie Architecture, to specify our Debris Series in the kitchen area. The tile’s 52% recycled material and local sourcing and sustainable manufacturing mattered to them, but the high quality and unique style were absolute requirements. We believe the result is great and can’t wait to go taste some of the delicious food!
August 17, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series Showroom/Boneyard
We launched our first newsletter update! We’d love to hear your thoughts: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Fireclay Tile - August 2009 Update
As a follow-up to our Newsletter we wanted to announce the winners of our First Trivia Contest. We asked the following question:
Trivia Question: Where does the name “fireclay” come from? Best answer as judged by Paul, our founder and chief ceramicist, wins. Submit entries by August 18, 2009 by emailing (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
The winners and the winnings were as follows:
First place - 2 sets of beautiful Cuerda Seca gift tiles: Jeffery Hellmuth
Runners up - 1 set of beautiful gift tiles: Adrian Crawford, Tyra Johnson, Therese Brown, Alex Moskowitz
The most creative answer came from Tyra who said:
“Here’s my guess. Paul’s middle name is Clay. And his last name Burns is a synonym to fire. As opposed to Burns Clay, he selected Fireclay.”
We look forward to our next Trivia Contest! Thanks for playing!
August 8, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series Showroom/Boneyard
Fireclay Tile was recently featured in the San Jose Mercury News for our reproduction of 100-year old tile from a Spanish-style Mission-revival house.
“The stark white house at the end of Plaza Drive in San Jose’s historic Palm Haven neighborhood takes you by surprise. It’s a small single story on a corner lot. But its domed tower and decorative parapet across the roofline force you to take a second look.
This is Michael Borbely’s mini-masterpiece — a recently completed Mission Revival house of stucco and tile that took years of research to create with the help of a local tile company to reproduce century-old details.
It’s not a big house, but it’s a flexible house,” he says. “I see this as able to double as a dining space” or a gracious area for wine receptions. A wainscoting of colorful tile, reproduced by Fireclay Tile, came from a 100-year-old photograph Borbely found.”
We were proud to be part of such a wonderful project!
July 27, 2009 | filed under: Bottlestone Company News Debris Series
Fireclay Tile’s Debris Series and BottleStone were recently donated to the BRAND NEW CORA Project in the Bay Area.
We were so proud to be asked to participate in the wonderful CORA Safehouse and can’t wait to see the new house in its debut in August.
Kit Golson, a phenomenal green designer had the following to say to Paul:
—————Forwarded message—————
From: Kit Golson
Date: Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 7:26 AM
Subject: CORA Project Countertop and Tile Donation
To: Paul Burns
July 2, 2009 | filed under: Bottlestone Company News Debris Series
Paul Burns, Fireclay Tile’s Founder and Chief Ceramicist, was interviewed at the Dwell on Design show by Buildaroo. We loved the interview and hope you enjoy it too!
Here’s what they had to say:
Paul of Fireclay Tile started his business 24 years ago, to make high quality handmade tiles for residential and commercial use. He began using refuse and recycled material quite a long time ago, and has since evolved his product to use recycled glass waste, from post consumer recycling. Almost 25% of the clay body in his tile uses the recycled glass. He goes further to use other post-consumer waste in his tiles as well. The recycled glass product helps to make the tile even stronger and more durable than regular tile. To find more information on Fireclay Tiles, visit FireclayTile.com, or a Fireclay Tile dealership. Every product is made to custom order, enabling for fantastic flexibility in several designs, colors, and shapes. The tile can contribute to LEED points, due to its 50% recycled content, as well as the local nature of its manufacturing.
June 17, 2009 | filed under: Claymonde Company News Debris Series
Fireclay Tile will be showing off its Debris Series and Claymonde at the Dwell on Design show in LA on June 26-28. We are thrilled at the chance to show our sustainable and unique products to such a tremendous and dedicated group of designers and architects. If you are going to be in the area please contact us. We’d love to hear from you.
For a copy of our press release please click here
.
June 1, 2009 | filed under: Bottlestone Claymonde Company News Debris Series Jellybean Rocks Vitrail
We have recently launched a 2009 Fireclay Tile Catalog featuring our collection of unique ceramic products. The catalog can be viewed here.
May 2, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series
Our Debris Series was proud to be featured in the home of Christina and Steve Guzzetta, some of our oldest friends, during the Annual Willow Glen Lifestyle Home Tour as featured in the San Jose Mercury News.
March 1, 2009 | filed under: Company News Debris Series
We take it as an honor when blogs or news sites choose to review our products. Many times we only find out about these through our one of our favorite company’s, Google, and it’s Google Alerts.
Mother Earth News is one of the most reputable names out there as far as lifestyle blogs that strive hard to promote healthy, happy green lifestyles.
Regarding our Debris Series, they wrote:
“Other products, such as the Debris Series from Fireclay Tile, combine post-industrial and post-consumer recycled wastes. The Debris Series tile consists of 26 percent recycled granite dust (post-industrial waste) from a granite-cutting operation. It also contains 26 percent recycled glass (post-consumer waste). Plus, the glazes used by this company contain no lead, so they’re safer for the workers who apply them.”
All this is true. We might also add that our sustainable manufacturing includes a tremendous amount of re-use of our own materials, including everything from water, glaze residue, and of course the ceramic materials. In total we estimate that at least 60-65% of each ceramic tile we produce is made up of recycled materials, though we only give ourselves credit for recycled materials we obtain from other, non-Frieclay, sources in our marketing literature.
Please let us know if you’d like more information on our Debris Series or any other product by contacting us.
September 7, 2008 | filed under: Company News Debris Series Showroom/Boneyard
We loved this blog post from a local customer who highlighting using one of our Factory Showroom products (which we buy from Gladding-McBean) as a pizza stone!
We LOVE pizza here at Fireclay, and using this product makes a ton of sense in this way.
Thanks for the suggestion.
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