Granby Workshop X Pentagon Tiles
During London Design Festival 2018, Liverpool based architectural ceramics manufacturer, Granby Workshop, will launch a range of Encaustic Clay Tiles in collaboration with Pentagon Tiles.
History of Encaustic Tiles
Encaustic tiles were originally popularised by the Victorians, but have been around since Medieval times. The tiles reached their peak in the mid 1800s, when renowned ceramics manufacturing company, Minton’s, paved the floors of many of that era’s grandest buildings.
A Modern Twist
Granby Workshop were interested in rethinking the Encaustic tile by applying their unique, experimental manufacturing philosophy to this historic process. Granby Workshop’s Encaustic Clay Ties, are a reinvention of the traditional, coloured ceramic floor tiles. The tiles are made from unglazed, vitrified clay. The colours and patterns are not surface-applied, but formed from the colours of the clay body itself, meaning that the patterns do not fade as they wear.
Multiple batches of different coloured custom clay are marbled together, and randomly combined under extreme pressure - a 60 tonne hydraulic press - making every tile unique. They are suitable for interior and exterior use on floors and walls.
Encaustic Tiles at Venice Architecture Biennale
The tiles were first unveiled to the public, at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. An installation of 8,000 tiles in the Chini Room, located in the Biennale’s Central Pavilion, combined close, considered detail with the visual power of the expanse. This was sure to have visitors looking down, rather than look up. This ‘floor-de-force’ is an acknowledgement, to the highly decorative floors of Victorian churches and municipal structures from the heyday of Encaustic tile production.
The tiles were laid using the Ardex DS20 decoupling mat, allowing them to be easily removed following the end of the Biennale. A limited number of the tiles will be for sale, as most will be removed from Venice Biennale, and transported across Venice where they will be installed permanently in the garden of the V-A-C Foundation at the Palazzo delle Zattere, Venice.
London Design Festival 2018
At London Design Festival, the tiles will be launched at our Leather Lane showroom, with an opening event on the 18th September. For the remainder of the LDF week, the tiles will be on show to the public, hosted as part of a Granby Workshop Pop-up shop in our Leather Lane space.
