Tile Is A Fashion Choice -- It's Not Just For The Bathroom Anymore

WHILE TILE HAS BEEN around for about 4,000 years and has always been an important embellishment to the buildings of certain countries, such as England, Italy, Spain, Mexico, the Netherlands and those of the Middle East, its use in the United States had been relegated to the bathroom for the past 50 years.

But times are changing. A resurgence of interest in hand-crafted furniture and crafts has encouraged cottage industries in tile manufacture that have been welcomed by architects, interior designers and home remodelers.

The variety of choices has increased greatly over the past decade to include both reproductions of historically important designs and new designs that might have been made in Old World countries or in the potteries of England and America during the golden age of tile manufacture. From the simplest color squares to octagons, hexagons, circles and mosaics, and from 1-inch to 8-inch squares, tile offers diverse choices in a rainbow of colors and patterns for complete floor and wall treatment, or simply for decorative borders and moldings. You may have to visit a number of stores to explore the full range of options, because each shop represents or has exclusive rights to particular tile lines.

Billee Gearhard of Pratt & Larson encourages tile buyers to "save your tile dollars and put them where you want to make a statement." That means combining inexpensive field tile with some well-chosen border or relief pieces. For example, tile by artist Chuck Totten can be expensive - as high as $98 a square foot for his most labor-intensive mosaic work. But by combining a rich decorative border with less expensive field tile (ranging from $4 to $5 at discount houses to $18 for Pratt & Larson to $30 per square foot for Totten's own) a cost-conscious home remodeler can obtain an eye-catching accent floor for an entrance hall.

The nature of art tile is also one of its drawbacks in a market filled with "perfect" mass-manufactured and machine-pressed tile. Edges are not perfectly square or colors consistent. There are irregularities, molding pieces don't line up directly, and grout joints may need additional attention. Says Robin Gray of the Ann Sacks Tile & Stone showroom in Seattle, "We need to educate our clients to the hand-crafted look. Shape variation and color ranges can be a shock. Our display boards try to show them a range of color they can expect to see in the product."

While many first-time browsers are overwhelmed by tile possibilities, Gray says, "Sometimes people come into the shop with a file full of things they have been tearing out of magazines for five years. That's great. It gives us an idea of the direction to go."

WHAT'S NEW IS OLD

Portland artists Michael Pratt and Reta Larson combined their interests - Michael in ceramics, Reta in fabric design - to form Pratt & Larson Ceramics, Inc., and develop a tile palette of more than 300 field colors available in sizes ranging from 1-inch to 8-inch square. They added patterned tiles and trims within that palette, along with a line of raku, botanical, fruit and sea-life bas-relief tiles. They produce a Craftsman line as well. Unlike Marie Glasse Tapp, who does literal reproductions of works by Batchelder and others, Pratt and Larson do their own designs. According to Suki Towne of the Seattle showroom, "Ours conjure up the era." The firm represents a dozen local and regional artists.

IT'S THE FINISH

Ann Sacks Tile & Stone, an Oregon-based import and manufacturing company with eight showrooms nationally, carries an array of its own tile in standard or specialty glazes, as well as representing artists and manufacturers throughout the U.S. and 10 foreign countries. They carry an impressive variety of colors and finishes, from smooth matte to glazed to crazed, with patterns that run the historic gamut from Primitive, Moorish and Celtic to Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts and Contemporary. Prices range from a few dollars up to $50 per square foot.

GOOD AS NEW

Marie Glasse Tapp formed Tile Restoration Center in 1983, primarily to do just that - restore damaged tile in kitchens, bathrooms, fireplaces, wherever. When tile was badly damaged, as it often is after earthquakes and fires, she set about making new tiles to match the originals. She has restored tile by some of America's most famous Arts and Crafts-period tile makers. After years of experimentation with sizes and colors (clay shrinks and glazes change color when fired), Tapp began to specialize in reproducing Batchelder tiles and ornamental trim pieces.

Batchelder, a highly successful Los Angeles tile manufacturer, marketed his tiles throughout the country. In Seattle, several distributors carried his material. Through them and through his mail-order catalogs the fireplaces of many of the houses built in Seattle between 1910 and 1932 acquired their distinctive handmade decorative surrounds and mantels. Her tiles are the focus of an adaptive reuse project at our own 1926 home, which has an Ernest Batchelder art-tile fireplace surround.

VICTORIAN FROM VICTORIA

For the remodeler looking for authenticity in a 19th- or early 20th-century home, it might be worth a trip to Victoria, B.C. Charles Rupert Designs in Oak Bay specializes in Victorian, Edwardian, Art Nouveau and Arts and Crafts eras and stocks a large selection of historically appropriate wallpapers, tiles, mosaic floors, fabrics, cushions, rugs and furnishings.

Owners Stuart Stark and Margaret Graham-Bell, both heritage consultants, specialize in Victorian and Edwardian designed art tile from England and New Zealand. Many tiles are authentic reissues, still made in the same factories that produced the originals over 100 years ago. Among these are works by William de Morgan and William Morris. They augment these with newly created Arts and Crafts relief tiles with images of trees and pine cones, late-19th-century floral tiles, hollow-cast face tiles and a range of colored field tiles to match. The shop does much of its business by catalog and mail orders.

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Here are some good places to start looking for the perfect ceramic tiles for your next project.

TILE RESTORATION CENTER 3511 Interlake Ave. N. Seattle, WA 98103 633-4866

PRATT & LARSON TILE 207 Second Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98104 343-7907

ANN SACKS TILE & STONE 115 Stewart St. Seattle, WA 98101 441-8917

CHAS. RUPERT DESIGNS 2004 Oak Bay Ave. Victoria, B.C. V8R 1E4 (604) 592-4916

A TILE STORE 413 First Ave. S. Seattle, WA 98104 682-8737

ART TILE CO. INC. 8503 Roosevelt Way N.E. Seattle, WA 98115 523-3032

THE WILLEY CO. Seattle Design Center 5701 Sixth Ave. S., Suite 127 Seattle, WA 98108 767-6502

TILE HERITAGE FOUNDATION P.O. Box 1850 Healdsburg, CA 95448 (707) 431-8453 (Tile Heritage Foundation is a nonprofit organization that maintains a national list of ceramic restorers who may specialize in the tile you have.)

Lawrence Kreisman is author of six publications on regional architecture and historic preservation. He writes regularly for Pacific. Greg Gilbert is a Seattle Times photographer.