3.75 m2+ antique ceramic vegetal themed floor with half size borders

One of three floors reclaimed from the same house, built around 1905 in Tournai, Belgium, a small antique ceramic floor totalling 3.75m2+ / 41.6 sq. ft. The floor was produced by Societe Anonyme des Produits Ceramiques de St. Remy, Chimay, Belgique and we include in the gallery, for provenance, a scan from their period catalogue presenting the tiles. The cover of the catalogue, in all its wonderful art nouveau indulgence, is a work of art in itself.

The palette of the floor is cool, in leaf greens, mid-blue and white on a dove-grey slip and the design is bold, embracing early art nouveau themes of stylized natural and vegetal forms, geometrically pure when opening out over four tile tessellations. The field tiles are framed by 14cm x 7cm half-sized borders with leaf green now replaced by a stronger presence of greys.

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE SAME SIZE BORDER TILES IN THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NO LONGER AVAILABLE.

The patina of the floor is rich; the 1.5m2 / 16 sq. ft. randomly selected tiles for the photographs are an accurate representation of the whole floor; there are small chips and edge nibbles on some tiles, all groutable and all part of their antique charm. Indeed, each one of these 14cm / 5.5-inch sq., 15mm / 0.6-inch-thick tiles has been individually quality-controlled and, having been painstakingly cleaned of their old mortar, grouts, surface dirt and wax one by one, the results are self-evident.

Being a highly fired tile, the floor can be re-laid inside or outside the home as high summer and sub-zero winter temperatures will not affect the tiles' robustness.

Tile quantities – give or take one or two:-

FIELD tiles – 170 – 3.4m2 / 36.6 sq. ft

SMALL BORDER tiles – 45 plus 3 corners – 0.47m2 / 5 sq.ft or 6.3 linear metres / 20.7 linear ft.

NOTE Antique tiles were most commonly made in single or two tile moulds. Before current computer automation methods their moulds were made by hand and the colour slips mixed by eye. Kiln temperatures could also be variable, as could the firing time. The result is that tiles often display subtle size and thickness variations and there can be tonal variations in colours, owing to the slip mixing and/or firing time. All of this makes these handmade tiles unique and adds to their charm. Some floors display their subtle variations in size and tones, some not, but when photographing we always take a random section of the floor so that it is representative of the whole. A tiler should always dry lay a section of the tiles to familiarise himself with them before starting to fix lay.