Could this be the beginning of a beautiful tile?

A collage of some of the new concepts that our designers are noodling around with.  This always starts with many, many choices.  And you never quite know where it will end up.  Some designs that we absolutely LOVE could eventually fall out of the running.  And sometimes the opposite happens. A timid, unassuming design idea that nobody gives much attention, can leave us breathless once it is dressed up and displayed on stone.  It can be a wild ride, but oh so much fun!

Deep, rich colors - a makeover for our Marseille Collection

From the moment that we introduced it, our Marseille Collection has been one of our most celebrated and popular tile designs.   We have seen this versatile pattern used in kitchen backsplashes, large and small, and also scaled up for large format flooring applications.   It even won the coveted Platinum Award for Design Excellence (ADEX) for 2009.

The Marseille Collection was inspired by Jacobean embroidery, using highly stylized floral designs with flowing vines and leaves.  This type of embroidery was popular during the reign of King James I of England, in fabrics used for elaborate tapestries, bed hangings, curtains and even stylish jackets worn by both men and women. 

Ladies, can you imagine dressing yourselves in all those layers of embroidered, lace finery every morning?  And Gentlemen - how many of you could rock that terrific gold, leafy shirt like this guy is doing?  (Hawaiian shirts don't count.)  He owns that look.

We originally introduced this collection with three colorways - Red, Blue-Green and Green-Yellow.

In the past few months, our designers have been working to create different color palettes for this design.  We are going with rich, deep hues that really make a statement - Burgundy, Sage Green and Deep Brown.  Earthy and warm, but with enough boldness to add a stunning focal point to any room.

Burgundy

Sage Green

Deep Brown

The colors that you see here will become a bit more muted after these designs are printed on our stone tiles.  The shading of the natural stone will show through in the areas that are white in these pictures.  The warm color and natural texture of the stone will add so much to the unique beauty of these designs.  You will never get quite the same result on a porcelain or ceramic tile.  The natural stone gives this collection a warmth and a timeless feel that maintains the connection to its historic origins.

When size does matter

Our designers love a challenge.  Send us your odd-shaped rooms, crazy backsplash measurements or impossible looking spaces and we'll help you figure out a tile layout that will work.  You might be surprised by all of the tricks and workarounds we can come up with to modify our designs

Here is an example.  A client really loved the Marseille Red pattern.

It is shown in our catalog with the middle pattern on eight 6x6 tiles and border listellos as 3x6 tiles with 3x3 corners.   As you might already know, we can print any of our designs in any size that you want.  You can also choose any of our stone types (or send us yours.)  

This person had a particularly small space to work with - 34 inches across and 10 inches high.  Here is what we came up with:

In this modified version, the middle pattern is a single row of five 6x6 tiles.  Border listellos are 2x6 with 2x2 corner pieces.  (You can click on any of these pictures to get a better view.)

At first glance, it might be easy to miss all of the detail changes that had to be done to the design in order to fit that space.  For instance, the middle pattern is usually made up of four tiles, but in this case we had to shrink the whole pattern down to fit on a single 6x6 tile.

It normally takes two listellos in the border pattern to make up the design.  The little flower thingy is in the middle.  

But in this case there was an uneven number of listellos needed.  For the 34 inch width,  we had to use five 2x6 tiles across.  (Five 2x6's give you 30 inches and then add 2 inches on each side for the corner pieces to come up with the total of 34 inches.)

How did we solve this issue?  We created a new listello that has the flower in the center of the 2x6 tile that lines up with the regular 2x6 tiles so that the pattern continues to flow.

This allowed us to use five 2x6 listellos to border along the top and bottom, like this:

Et voila!  The same Marseille Red pattern, still balanced and flowing evenly, in a much smaller space.

We have to give credit to the designer who worked this out.  Drew is the Pattern King.  We can always rely on him to solve problems like this.  He is somehow able to see the flow of the patterns and the connections in all the chaos.  He has the attention to detail that is necessary to make sure the lines line up and and swirls keep swirling.  But he also has a good sense of design and knows when something has crossed over into "Boy, that looks stupid" territory.  

So don't be afraid to give us a call if you need help with some odd space.  There is a chance that we have already made some modifications for another client that will work for you too.  Or we can continue to throw challenges to Drew to see what he can come up with.  

Now that we've bragged about him, we are hoping it doesn't go to his head.  So send us your most difficult layout issues and let's see if we can stump him! 

Designing: What you see, is not always what you get

One of the tricky parts about designing for stone tile, is that you never quite know how something is going to look once you print it on stone. You can have a design that looks beautiful on your computer screen, but when you print it on stone it changes the look dramatically. The colors become too muted or flat; the lighter parts completely fade into the stone; or it just looks awful when printed on stone. The opposite can also occur - a design that just looks okay on the screen turns fabulous once it is printed on the stone.

Over the years we have learned what colors, patterns and textures work best with natural stone tile. We want the stone to enhance the look of the design, not fight it. We intensely dislike (hate) when the design or pattern looks like it is sitting on top of the stone as if it were a decal pasted on. To get the blended look that we want, we sometimes have to erase or lighten parts of the design, so that more of the natural stone shows through. In other cases, we can adjust the saturation of color in the design so it blends into the stone better. And often we have to change the color entirely.

Bright purple on stone? Not so hot.

Gold tones? Much better.

Ideally, the inherent variations in color and texture of the stone will be one of the elements that adds to the beauty of the finished product. If you want flat, uniform, boring tile - buy ceramic. Natural stone tile has much more character and life to it - and that is why we like it.

Here's an example of how the color of a design can change.

This is the artwork before it is printed on stone. It is a little bit too much yellow/green, but the colors are bright and happy.

Here it is after it is printed on stone.

Where did the color go?!