a tale of tile - pt.2
After I found my favorite Etruscan pattern I went to work to create the repeating tile pattern. Simplifying a bit and inverting the original so that the darker teardrop shapes resembled cypress tress which dot the landscape.
I separated the basic shapes to find the best options for the least amount of tile pieces and decided that the full pill-shaped oval section could be one tile with the darker “cypress” shape as a shallower part. I plan to use a black grout so that will fill this shape and create a darker section here without a new tile shape needed.
Then I calculated the proportion and sizes based on the final niche measurements and made a list of how many tiles I’d need before heading to the forno to speak to them about my idea.
If you remember a few months ago I found this place after making the little votiva from the clay found as they broke ground on the lot. I’d molded it at home and took it in to the workshop to see if they wouldn’t mind firing it for me. They couldn’t have been nicer and were happy to show us around and fire it for us - and wouldn’t even let me pay for anything.
I told them that when I needed other clay pieces made (as I’d planned on having a few larger plant pots made for the terrace) that I’d come back to them. So when we arrived last week with this idea for the tiles they were so obliging and let us peek more around the factory, explained the history of the place, and how the process works exactly. I told them I was interested in the black clay so they showed us how they make this as well (mixing a natural black pigment from a nearby region with a more neutral colored clay).
Then we spoke with the head potter and he asked that I make a to-scale pattern (with an 8% increase to account for the shrinkage in the oven) and return when it was ready.
So I set to work on cutting it from a hard piece of foam and printing out the specifications. When we returned he said that he’d been kept awake thinking of solutions for me of how to make these in a way that would work. Since they’re smaller than the sizes they are used to, and the way they work is very simple and completely handmade as it has been for ages, there aren’t machines to handle any details. They just have to find a manual solution instead, so he explained that it will need to be heavy enough to have weight as it drops from the mold.
He decided that the best idea is to make a mold of 3 tiles together so that the weight should be sufficient to have it cleanly drop from the forma. In a few days he hopes to have built the custom mold for the project and I told him that I’d love to be able to come and watch the process happen so he’ll be calling when they begin.
(to be continued…)