Our love affair with cement encaustic tiles continues with these colourful, graphic floor tiles from WorkHouse design studio. Based in East London, WorkHouse produces a collection of furniture, lighting and tiles that, they say “combines boutique British style and elegance with an honest and raw contemporary edge”.
Although the range is called the British Tile Collection – UK designers and artists who were commissioned to create these exclusive designs – the cement tiles are produced in Tangiers using traditional methods that haven’t changed for over a century (we previously wrote about the process here).
Inspired by the idea of taking this traditional craft and marrying it to contemporary designs, WorkHouse asked four British artists and designers whose work “reflected their own vision to create products that echo the past whilst looking to the future”.
The collection is right up our street here at cbt HQ, with its colourful and clean graphic lines, and patterns which offer some fabulous optical illusions. What I particularly love about so many tile designs is the ability to configure them differently to achieve different effects and the British Tile Collection doesn’t disappoint. As each pattern in the range comes in a choice of colours you could spend many happy hours playing with the different designs, trying to find your favourite combination of colour, line and pattern.
Above, Vanbrugh and below, Webb, both by surface design duo CUSTHOM (whose work we previously featured here). Webb is inspired by a Palladian-style window, exploring the use of negative space, geometry, form and scale.
Block 45, above and below, designed by Gemma Fabbri takes inspiration from the graphic line detail of parquet flooring and brick work. The tile pattern allows for a variety of configurations together with a block of accent colour.
In sinuous contrast, and also by Gemma Fabbri, is the soft and curvy Link, above.
Converging and diverging lines and tonal shades create a striking effect in Gradient Beam, above, by Jethro Macey, who also designed Warped Diamond, below. I’m totally smitten with this simple turquoise and white design; it’s so wonderfully clean and fresh.
Finally, bold Op Art designs from the archives of artist Roy Pegram. Above is Tempered Pitch and, below, Tone Row.
So, yet more wonderful encaustic cement tile designs to add to my ever-growing wish list. One day, I hope to have a renovation project to use some of them …
Images: WorkHouse
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