Spotlight on... Lubna Chowdhary, ceramic tile genius

If you love colour and don't know Lubna Chowdhary's geometric ceramic work, you should...

The artist's gloriously hued tiles have been on my interiors horizon for ages, and when I saw her work up close a couple of years ago at London Design Festival I was even more dazzled.

Above: Chowdhary in her studio at work, left, and some of her colourful geometric designs

Chowdhary describes her work as "architectural ceramics", and she regularly designs pieces specially for large-scale non-residential projects, as well as creating stand-alone artworks. As such, buying a piece of Chowdhary's work is quite an investment... But – ta-da! – if south London is accessible to you (or a kindly friend), take note as this weekend she's throwing a very special studio sale (scroll to end for details). By way of celebration, I asked her a few questions about her work, her inspiration and her home.

Tile design is a pretty niche area – what drew you to tiles? 
I studied ceramics at the RCA and initially created sculptural work [that] referenced architecture and the built environment. After some time I realised I wanted to move outside the gallery environment with my work and I transferred my skills from sculptural ceramics to tile or architectural ceramics. 

I treat tile as I would a canvas or  paper and work on it with rich colour, line or texture and sometimes create relief forms. I describe my work as architectural ceramics as I've worked on so many varied projects, some of which don't involve tile but draw on my design and creative skills in other ways.

Above: a kitchen fill of D-Tiles

Tiles are having quite a moment right now – there were lots at this year's London Design Festival. Any other tiles you particularly like?
My work is hand crafted and bespoke, it's known particularly for the richness of glaze and intense colour qualities. These are the qualities I prefer in tile; the unpredictability and the serendipity associated with glaze to mechanically applied transfers. There are a lot of industrially produced tiles around at the moment because I think tile manufacturers are now really in tune with the relationships of tile to contemporary design, interiors and architecture.

If asked to pick an industrially made  tile, I like the functionality of D-Tile but also love the graph paper-like quality of  just a plain white tile with grey grout. 

What's been a favourite commission in terms of its unusual use of tiles?
I love all the work I'm commissioned to do and always learn so much each time. In terms of residential commissions though, I think Retrouvius is good to mention. It was such a delight to work with them as I just love Retrouvius's use of materials and colour for this project (see below).

Above: Retrouvius redesigned this whole house, a listed building, and Chowdhary created the tiles pictured left for the lavish loo.

It was a small commission for which I did some glaze  colour matching with the wallpaper colours. and then made some bespoke tiles to match the Emery & Cie tiles. I love the asymmetric insertion of the tiles.

What are your current favourite colour combinations?

Tumeric and prawn [as seen in these painted windows, in a photo taken by Chowdhary in Kerala, south India].

Grey-green and scarlet [as seen in this Zinnia, also snapped by Lubna].

And beetroot and turquoise [also one of Chowdhary's own images].

How tile-y is your house? 

My house has tiles in the hearths of three fireplaces [one is pictured above], a fully tiled shower enclosure and a small sink splashback. 

We have a large circular tile which we use as a centre piece on our dining table and some small circular tiles which we use as coasters and also some of my hotplates with ceramic inserts, which I use every day [below]. I also have a couple of framed tile panels [above, and below in situ].

Find out more at Lubnachowdhary.co.uk and don't miss the studio sale this weekend if you're anywhere near south London (one of her tiles would make a very lovely Christmas present for the design and colour lover in your life). The sale will include individual tiles (prices start at just a fiver!) as well as her stunning tile panels and limited edition walnut wood hotplates with glazed ceramic inserts, both at 30% off.

When: 10am – 6pm on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 December 2014
Where: 162 Sunnyhill Road, London SW16 2UN (a 10-minute walk from Streatham or Streatham Hill stations, or a short bus ride from Brixton tube)

Object of the day: Jacqueline Talbot tiles

Unusual tiles are a find. And these, by artist Jacqueline Talbot, are just that.

In 2009, Jacqueline experimented with photographing her paintings, intending to use them to create digitally printed wallpaper. But then discovered she could digitally reproduce her work onto tiles... one kiln later, and a business was born.

I think they're beautiful, and beautifully different. They aren't intended for use on floors, but are safe around fireplaces and as oven splashbacks, or just as a decorative wall feature.

They're reasonable too: prices start at £4.50 per tile for the smallest size, 9.8cm x 9.8cm, and go up to £14 apiece for the largest size, 19.8cm x 19.8cm. Jacqueline also creates bespoke designs on request.

Had I not gone for all-black for the downstairs loo, a totally tiled power room in the style of the above arrangement would have worked a treat. Too startling? Be inspired by this incredible tiled house in Mali. Tiles were also all over London Design Festival this year, including beautiful displays by Bert & May and some cool collaborations, notably the British Tile Collection series with Workhouse and guests (see a couple of teasers from my Instagram feed below).

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More from yesterday's #designjunction plunder: hot tiles from @workhousecoll & Roy Pegram in the #BritishTileCollection collaboration series - also featuring Custhom & Gemma Fabbri #design #tiles #pattern @_designjunction #LDF14 #London #L_D_F_official

View on Instagram

One of Jacqueline's original paintings.

I don't think the gallery on Jacqueline's website does her beautiful ceramic artworks justice, but I do like the featured splashback, above.

Check out the extensive range at www.jacquelinetalbot.co.uk

Object of the day: Dutch tiles with tales

The best thing I saw at the London Design Festival last week measured 10 centimetres square and was based on a 16th century Dutch design classic. 

Yes, yes, there was so much to love at LDF 2014. The sprawling event, now in its 11th year, is the non-trade way through the back doors of the design world and, with six big fairs in different venues, various landmark displays of creativity, and about a zillion satellite range or product or designer launches in galleries, shops and street corners across the city, visiting can provoke a little design overload.

So these unusual Amsterdam-made StoryTiles by visual artist, Marga Van Oers – which I saw at Design Junction – aren't the only thing I loved, but they are probably the most memorable.

Marga explains the concept (better than I can at midnight on a Sunday) on her website (details below): "StoryTiles are miniature stories on Dutch Whites, the old-fashioned Dutch tiles that have been made since the 16th century. [Marga] gives old tiles a new life with her unique, detailed and humorous collages. Every StoryTile tells its own story."

A simple idea, beautifully executed. The tiles cost 25 Euros (£20ish) each for a 10cm x 10cm size, and go up to 75 Euros (£59ish) for 20cm x 20cm. Not cheap for tiles, but eminently affordable for wonderful, tiny art. Marga also creates larger versions printed onto wood, which you can see on her site. I think Little Red Riding Hood (below) might be my favourite.

They provide a similar joy to the similarly small but perfectly formed work of Israeli magazine illustrator and artist, Tali Yalonetzki, which I mentioned in Friday's post about some of my favourite makers featured on this blog of late. If you missed it, and like these, check it out.

Or go straight to Marga's site for more on the tiles: www.storytiles.nl

The Insider: inspiring tiles from Bert & May

The Conran shop is usually out of this blog's price range... but this story is only partly about Conran.

The rest of it is about Bert & May, a new company (but also not so new, more of which shortly) specialising in beautiful reclaimed and made-to-look reclaimed tiles. Bert & May today launch their collaboration with the Conran Shop, with whom they have exclusively developed a hue named Azure Blue, inspired by the French Riviera.

They've woven Azure into a range of geometric tile designs featuring an array of other blues. Rather lovely, don't you think? Especially on a living room floor... And if you can't afford enough tiles to do that, you could get busy with a stencil and some no-prep Annie Sloan paint... (I'll be writing more about Annie Sloan anon, since I've just done one of her paint effect classes).

Brits don't generally do tiles on bedroom or living room floors – it's not, of course, an idea that would ever have originated in a country with chilly winters. But underfloor heating has changed everything. If you fancy the idea, you might also find inspiration in this incredible 70s-heavy house in Mali, tiled pretty much all over.

Alternatively, you could also limit your tile numbers, as I did in the recent downstairs loo makeover, which made two salvage yard floor tiles centre-stage. And two tiles are eminently affordable.

But I digress.

My first contact with the company now known as Bert & May was a couple of years ago, when the company's co-founder Lee Thornley dropped me a line.

The email explained how his passion for beautiful reclaimed tiles had come about. And it was quite a story... Lee (Bert) and his wife Amelia (who is not, incidentally, May) met on a Spanish course in Andalucia. Both had quit their respective "rat race" lives in the UK (his words) and wound up there, searching for something new. They found each other, and in under three months of meeting had decided to open a hotel in Spain together. But when their search for a beautiful old building to renovate was unsuccessful, they decided to build their own "old new" version. The hotel Casa La Siesta has since been voted one of Tatler's top 100.

But the building process had opened up another new door for Lee: reclaimed tiles which, as he puts it, he now "rummages around Europe for", and the skill of reproducing said tiles beautifully. And a few years later, with business partner, Harriet Roberts (she's May) here we are...

Bert & May's Azure Blue Majadas costs £7.50 each (plus vat).

Azure Blue Churriana also costs £7.50 each (plus vat).

But aside from the Conran collection, these designs also caught my eye.

The Ortuno tile costs from £7.50 apiece (plus vat). And take inspiration from this bar decor using the tiles: why tile a full wall?

This is the base of a bar – but why not the base of a bath?

Another commercial interior to be inspired by: I love the idea of framing a window, or indeed another architectural feature, with a tiled column or two.

The Zorita tile is priced as those above.

And these ones, above, Monochrome Esparza (£9 each, originals) remind me a little of the pair I picked up for the loo, don't you think?

bertandmay.com

Post by Kate

Real homes: when DIY goes wrong

It was meant to be a cheap, quick way to give the shower room a spring spruce-up. 

We had a leak in there, and while I was shopping for grout and silicone to fix it, I was dazzled by the grout reviver on sale nearby (everyone else gets excited and over-shops at DIY stores too – right?). A sparkly new bathroom for just a few quid? Yes please. Only things haven't gone quite to plan...

This enticing tube was the thing to transform the tiled floor from grubby-even-when-scrubbed to good as new. It'd also help to make the bit I had just fixed (that gleaming white line on the right) less prominent. Here's a better look at what I was hoping to transform.

Grimy innit? Though I should add, for my dignity, that the floor hadn't been cleaned for some time as we have been using the main bathroom since the leak, and tramping in here in big shoes. Still, cleaning only ever went so far anyway.

But back to the DIY. The tube of reviver has a sponge-y top which you can see here...

It isn't designed so you can be precise – stage one of the job is just to smear it across those cracks messily.

I was excited to start to see how bright the grout was looking already, though wondering how exactly I'd be getting it off of the tiles. The idea is that, after about half an hour, you wash off all the excess reviver from the tiles themselves, leaving just the grout gleaming whitely back at you. Except...

...what is really far down the instructions, and which I hadn't seen, is a line that reads: not suitable for matt tiles. Do you notice how un-shiny the green tiles are? Oh yes. And I read this once I'd got about this far...

Uh-oh. Though I haven't used a product like this before, I'm far from a DIY novice – how could I have made such a monumental cock-up? I cursed the packaging designer and instructions copywriter because it was easier than cursing my own stupidity (though, fairly or not, I do still curse whoever decided not to put that bit at the top).

Before the damn stuff dried any harder, I had to start washing it off. 

And when that didn't work, I tried to scrape it off with a razor blade. Yes, each individual little tile. It took over an hour, gave me massive back ache and, even then, it only looked like I'd been painting the walls without a dust-sheet on the floor. I see that you can also buy a grout reviving pen, which I think is what dazzled me in the first place, as I'd seen it in this satisfying Apartment Therapy story.

I am guessing the pen is more precise and may do the job (though obviously, ahem, I'll read the label in full before I buy). I'll give that a go, and will probably be having nightly razor blade sessions for the next few weeks to get the rest of the white marks off.

Anyone else care to share a DIY disaster?

Post by Kate

Cloakroom decor ideas: crazy tiling?

The one room in my house that has never been decorated is the downstairs loo. After five years, the excitement of even having a such a room is wearing off – a bit – and the hastily executed white wash – damage limitation rather than re-decoration (it was lime green and acid yellow when I moved in) is now flaking off.

The "smallest room in the house" feels like a good place in which to be bold with style, and get a bit experimental. But what to go for... maybe something like this?

These tiles have just gone on display under the banner of Pulsate; a collaborative installation by renowned landscape and architectural designer Lily Jencks and the Franco American architect, Nathanael Dorent. It's an unusual project – and essentially a commercial one, as it was commissioned by high-end tile retailer, Capitol Designer Studio for their Primrose Hill showroom. The brand wanted to shake up their display in a creative way – but they will also be hosting some interesting design talks in the new space (see below for details).

The idea was partly inspired by Op Art and Gestalt psychology – in this context playing with, as Lily explains, “how you perceive distances and shapes; and make sense of space".

See left for an instantly recognisable, classic Gestalt image – it's about individual parts having their own characteristics within the whole or, in layman's terms: seeing two unique images within what initially appears to be just one.

Says Nathanael:  “We decided to use tiles in one size with four colours. It's just a simple herringbone pattern, but we've applied it in three dimensions to create something really eye-popping."

"To get the really vivid exciting pattern," adds Lily, "we go from dark to light to dark in a gradient, like a pulsating wave, which is where the name comes from.” Right, the Bridget 'Mother of Op Art' Riley work, Movement in Squares, illustrates the same approach.

It might all just be too discombobulating for the downstairs loo, but I like the idea of doing something that would completely wow you and mess with your spatial perception as you opened the door. These exact tiles are out of the cloakroom budget, but I shall keep you posted as to how the idea filters into reality.

Meanwhile, if you can get to north London and want to check out the showroom in person, it officially launches this Thursday and remains in situ until October. And the special events being hosted in-store include: Using Pattern and Colour in Tiles and Paint, hosted by Mark Williams of Capitol Designer Studios and Rishi Subeathar of eco paint company, eicó. 18 April 6-8pm and Pulsating Form, an evening of talks from designers and artists featuring Lily Jencks, Nick Hornby, Sinta Tantra, Megan Burke and Grania Loughnan. 16 May 6.30-8.30pm. To secure a place email: pulsate@cdstiles.com 020 7243 4731.
Capitol Designer Studio 42 Chalcot Road London NW1 8LS Opening hours: Thursday-Saturday 10am-5pm Monday-Wednesday: by appointment