Our next door neighbors, Caffe Umbria, will be hosting the wonderful and talented Teatro ZinZanni from 6:30 to 8:30 tomorrow night for First Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square. Join us for the fun on April Fool’s Day–no joke!
Monthly Archive for March, 2010
Futura by FAP in Sabbia
With its clean shape and amazingly versatile color palette,
Futura by FAP is destined to be modern’s new classic.
Meet our new favorite series.
Keep it simple.
Please visit our showroom for details.
The winner of the annual Pritzker Prize for architecture was announced this week. SANAA, a Japanese firm known for buildings that draw external elements into the built environment, received the prize this year. I first heard of SANAA when the New Museum opened in New York.
If there is a tie that binds their buildings, it must be the white or clear exteriors, as evidenced by an altogether different building to the New Museum, the Rolex Learning Center.
A beautiful home in the Barbee Mill waterfront development in Renton, Washington. Built by Conner Homes with tile done by Riverside Interiors. The kitchen backsplash features the London Grey Micene Mosaic.
The bathroom sink backsplash is Amour Metal 1×1 Mosaic over a stunning granite countertop.
The fireplace in the sitting room off the kitchen extends the Micene accent–linking the design between the spaces.
And the other fireplace is clad in the warm, dark brown of the Matouche Croc porcelain tile.
Jordan Iverson is a custom and spec home builder in Eugene, Oregon who creates tasteful and well-crafted residences. He recently shared with me his portfolio, which includes a lot of nice tile work.
Jordan’s use of ledger stone for interior backsplashes, accent walls, and fireplaces is a beautiful example of bringing the outside in–a perfect fit for the Pacific Northwest. In this house, the ledger stone serves as a design tie-in that carries through from bar backsplash to living room to stairwell.
For more information on Jordan Iverson Homes, go to his website or follow him on twitter.
Do you have your tickets for Vegas yet? HD Expo will be held at the Sands Convention Center next month–a can’t miss event for commercial designers and architects.
If you’ve followed our posts for any time, youv’e probably picked up that we are Italophiles–we have an appreciation for Italian art, food, design, and architecture. And MAXXI, the new museum of art and architecture in Rome, only serves to confirm our affection.
Maxxi
For more of the interior architecture, watch this video.
From Elle Decor comes this classic, one of their 13 beautiful ideas for white kitchens.
For the walls, we suggest Sculptur, a Calacatta-inspired ceramic tile that gives you the look of marble with the ease of maintenance of a glossy ceramic.
And for the Ebony floors? How about Abisko in the Ebano color?
So we updated our blog to be a bit simpler, to show off the images better, and to make reading a little easier. What do you think? Post your thoughts in comments and let us (and the world!) know.
Interview with Jen Renzi, Author of The Art of Tile: Part 1
Jen Renzi is a New York-based freelance writer and a former editor at House & Garden (RIP) and Interior Design magazines. Her work has appeared in The New York Times: T Style Magazine and Sunday magazine, CondeNast Traveler, Surface, and Wallpaper magazines, among other publications.
A. Ah, thank you for the plug! It got some nice press when it came out last spring and seems to be selling steadily; the topic of designing with tile is quite evergreen—and a subject that stumps and intimidates lots of people—so I’m hoping it will continue sell over the long haul!
Q. Your background covers a broad range of design categories. What made you decide to write a book on tile?
A. It was actually publisher Clarkson Potter’s idea and concept! My editor, Aliza, had seen a great spread on tile in a magazine and got the idea to do an entire book in the same vein: half field guide to tile, half catalog raisonné…page after page of tile in all varieties and formats and materials. I was working on another book for Clarkson—Samantha Nestor’s The Luxury Bath—and Aliza asked if I’d be interested in spearheading this one. As a design editor, I’ve reported on a fairly broad swath of art and design topics, but specialized in the kitchen and bath arena and had attended the Coverings and Cersaie trade shows in the past, so it was a good fit.
If you’d told me five years ago that I would be writing 300-page book on tile, though, I’m sure I would have thought you were NUTS.
Q. As a companion to the book, you publish a blog called The Tileist. Who do you find are your most avid readers and commenters, and where do you find the inspiration for your posts?
A. The most prolific commenters seem to be designers, architects, and people in the tile industry. But it varies—I think because the topics I cover are a little all over the place. In addition to straightforward coverage of cool tiles to use in your home, I’ll blog about tiles I encounter underground in the New York City subway, or tile graffiti, or artists who use tile as their chosen medium. So people often stumble on the site through pretty random web searches!
As for inspiration, I find it all over the place. Now that I’m entrenched in the subject, I’ve become quite sensitive to the medium: I see tile everywhere! And I often take furtive snapshots of restaurant bathrooms or building facades or friends’ homes with my cellphone as I’m running around. When my husband and I were getting married at City Hall, I had to fetch my camera from him so I could dash back into the loo and snap the tiled walls! And often I’ll find great products or projects in magazines or on other blogs and do a little more digging on the listed manufacturer’s website.
But I also have a huge repository of cool stuff I’ve amassed over the years. I have tons of CDs from trade shows, and I keep copying inspirational images into folders on my desktop—and then never get around to uploading them! Ah, if only I had more time.
Lately, I’ve posted some good questions from friends and acquaintances—what color grout to choose for a certain tile, say—and encouraged readers to weigh in with their own advice. That’s been a fun departure from my default mode, which is more of an online visual diary of what I’ve seen and been inspired by.
Q. What kind of tile do you have in your own home?
A. You would laugh! I live in a rental apartment in Brooklyn, which has no backsplash and, in the bathroom, the most characterless beige ceramic 4-by-4s tiles inset here and there—not even at regular intervals!—with a purple-ish faux-stone porcelain, the color and patterning of vericose veins, set on the diagonal. And the installation is terrible, which makes it all the more offensive: tiles are not cut crisply, insets don’t lay flush with the field tile, etc. etc.
Next Monday we’ll post Part 2 of the interview, in which Jen shares advice for designing with tile and the latest trends, as well as what tile she’d use in her dream home. Stay tuned!