Jonathan Adler’s groovy tiled furniture

Some more feel-good fun from ICFF: Mr. Adler showed some fab tiled furniture in his booth: tables, lamps, and decorative boxes with tiled lids! Last time I was in his office, I sneaked a peek at his top-secret tile prototypes, which were rad--so I’m glad to see some have surfaced as embellished furnishings! 

Cool tiles to check out at ICFF this week

Lots of tiles to check out at ICFF this year! Since you can’t execute a category search for “tile” on the ICFF website, I took it upon myself to troll the flooring, wallcovering, and materials categories for you and track down some top picks…in no particular order:

Stone Source #1762
Stone Source always has a great both. Last year, one of my favorite discoveries were designer Laura Gottwald‘s modern stone mosaics. This year, she unveils an equally stellar new encaustic cement collection (top).

Sensitile #1216
If you have never seen Sensitile’s luminous, light-reflective and -conductive acrylics and terrazzos in person, you must check them out:

 

Mio #2036
Hoping Jaime and Isaac from MIO show their cork ModuTiles this year! 

Dominic Crinson #2405
UK’s Dominic Crinson is one of very few companies that makes both wallpaper and tile. His patterns are always trippy and inventive:

Neelnox Stainless Steel Mosaic #1457
Don’t know these guys! Curious to see in person. They make stainless steel grade 304 mosaics in a wide variety of patterns. Check out the company’s website for more. 

HighStyle Floors #1344
Not sure what they are showing, but they carry StudioArt leather tiles, which have always intrigued me. And HighStyle is based in my home borough, Crooklyn!

Nemo #2240
Raymond and Eduardo dished about their booth design a few weeks back, and I’m excited to see the final scheme! Nemo’s theme this year is “Save the trees, use tile”… meaning we’ll see lots of great faux-wood porcelains (which, as regular readers of this blog know, gets me v. excited), including Bioessenze:

Ceramic Tiles of Italy pavilion #1420
Refin, Casa Dolce Casa, Lea, Appiani, Etrurua, and FAP are just some of the manufactures exhibiting at the pavilion this year. Tagina will be showing Joe (below)…

…and Ceramica Bardelli will be showing Fornasetti reissues!

Others to check out:

Ceramica Arnon #1148

Designer Tile & Stone #1356

Spanish manufacturers Roca #908 and Apavisa #906

Marmiro Stones

I’m sure I’m missing many more, so leave a comment and let me know what you saw and loved at the show!

An amazing (tiled!) house in Anapoima, Colombia

I spent a blissful week in February in and around Bogota, Colombia: perfect weather, strong coffee, amazing architecture, tropical flora…I can think of no greater paradise.

A highlight: visiting a stunning weekend getaway in Anapoima, about two hours southwest of the city. The design offered the perfect combination of refuge and openness, with a backside that wrapped around an infinity-edge pool and a near absence of exterior wall to abet 24/7 interaction with nature.

A simple design gesture summed up the architectural sensibility: a delightful water feature that coursed along the entrance hall, culmination in a reflecting pool in which floated the first tread of a staircase leading up to the roofdeck. The bottom of the pool was lined in multicolored blue ceramics that looked glazed by hand…stunning. The effect was beyond cooling–both literally and figuratively.

Try this one at home.

As seen on: 10th Avenue NYC

Strange but satisfying ceramic mosaic facade of a sketchy pizza parlor near 27th Street. Has an offbeat 70s-Euro vibe, no? Two days later I was walking around Philly and saw another pizza parlor clad in the exact same colorway, but a horizontal subway tile format. Perhaps this is a late-20th-century Italian-American culinary stylistic trope I’m unaware of? The mind boggles.

Tiled tableware (and tables)!

Once you become a Tileist, you can’t help but to notice tile-inspired designs everywhere, including home decorating stores (i.e. napkins, bedding, trays, trivets, etc.). For instance, every time I see square plates with bold patterns, I immediately think: Tile! To wit: this new porcelain tableware from Crate & Barrel, a cute housewarming gift for the obsessed tile lover in your life. Cuter still if you use these to serve dins on a mosiac-tiled table, like Jonathan Adler’s custom design (based on one of his needlepoint pillow patterns, clever), below!

Really, are these plates not adorable? I actually wish someone made real tiles in these prints…

Contain yourself!

I have a soft spot for Jason Miller‘s shipping-container tiles. No, they just look 3-D; large and small parallelogram tiles interlock to create the effect of stacked boxes popping off the wall. Will someone please just order a whole bunch and tile an entire bar or restaurant in them? Thanks.

Also, hop over to the New York Times to read about the designer’s new-ish apartment in Greenpoint, a louche paean to the 70s, complete with conversation pit…and a black-tiled backsplash (that might be rendered in colored gaffer’s tape)! Click here.

[photo by the talented Elizabeth Felicella:]

As seen in: Canal Street Station

Chinese artist Bing Lee’s 1998 “Empress Voyage,” an enigmatic ceramic-mosaic mural–based on a quirky pictorial-iconographic language he invented–always makes me smile when I’m dashing through the otherwise yuckers Canal Street station. 

Some info I dug up on the artist: bio here and show of more recent works at 2×13 Gallery here.

As seen in: Villa de Leyva, Colombia

As seen in: Jay Street/Borough Hall

I snapped this furtively, lest the subway police think I was a potential terrorist scoping out the joint! Just before the tilework was FINALLY completed. Now it’s all clean and pretty, but it was fun to see subway tileists in action, especially the low-tech taping-up-the-tiles-till-they-dry methodology…

Here’s an “after” shot so you can compare/contrast:

White bathroom week part deux…Ask an Expert: Handmade VS machine-made tile

So, white bathroom week is actually inspired by my friend Tom, who sent me the following query:

Q. “Hi! I’m about to redo my small-ish Brooklyn bathroom in white subway tile to match the existing floors, which are statuary marble. Wondering if it’s worth it to splurge for pricier handmade tiles versus machine made ones? My wife and I like the look of handmade subway tile better, but are weighing pros and cons of both options. And, yes, budget is somewhat of a concern. Do you have any advice? Thanks!” 

Just after receiving this question, I bumped into my friend, fellow design writer, and sometimes stylist Craig Kellogg at Maialino. Craig always has spot-on decorating advice, so I threw this question at him to see if he had clever thoughts….which of course he did:

A. “Tom, brick-shaped subway tiles have been fashionable for a while now so you might want to rethink using the shape altogether. Instead, why not consider styles that have a bit more life left in them? In a decade you may thank me.

That said, there ARE several ways to make any machine-made tiles look more artisanal. Have your tile-setter do a very sloppy job leveling the tiles, and the finished installation will seem to benefit from the thick-and-thin irregularity of a handmade tile surface. Depending on the tile you choose you can also consider using various offsets (from one row to the next) to change the look

Here’s how: 1st option involves lining up the vertical joints from one row to the next. That will create a grid. Or, you may want to offset rows by random amounts (avoiding any lined-up seams from one row to the next). The informality will be appealing. In a final option, try turning brick-shaped tiles on end. For a single row it will create decorative banding just beneath a wainscoting or at the baseboard. If you use all of your tiles on end, the result is a subtly appealing verticality that references 1980′s glam.”

And for all you New Yorkers out there, Craig also swears by white subway tile from Bella Tile at 178 First Avenue (11th Street) in Manhattan.

[Top: creamy whiteness from Waterworks' Campus collection]