A few years ago I received an email from a woman in Atlanta, Georgia who asked if I could create a fireplace surround for her home despite her small budget. She had saved photos of my work for 5 years while putting money aside to make her dream fireplace.
I was amazed and so touched. 5 years, wow, what an honor! I told her that we could absolutely work with her budget.
They aren’t rich by any means but value a beautiful home. Very often what I recommend for people with a small budget is to pick a few really special pieces or even just one - a piece of furniture, a rug, an accent wall of tile - rather than to spread it over a lot of “good” items. Even just one of these can “make” a room giving it mood and magnetism and far more pleasing than a room that’s fine but not at all special. Then over time you can add another element or 2 if you have the budget. Having items in your home that you really love makes all the difference.
This client was already thinking like this before contacting me. She wanted to start with the fireplace surround and then next year to add the fireplace hearth.
She sent me dimensions and her vision board with all of the colors she liked and her sources of inspiration. She is a huge fan of the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts era and so it was easy to know how to approach the aesthetic.
I started by putting together some glazes to show her. To save her money, I did this very causally and simply sent her iPhone photos of the glazes to get the idea of what she liked. Simultaneously I sent her photos of some previous work to use as a point of departure and so I could get a feel for which direction to pursue.
She loved my Quince Tree design and wanted to use it along with some flowers from another design and her own color palette.
Here is the palette I generally use for my Quince Tree:
So I made a small sample showing this design using the colors she chose and mailed this to her so she could make sure the glazes worked well in the room and with her home.
Once approved, I created a drawing to the exact dimensions of the client's fireplace. I used the Poppy flowers below from another of my designs, to help me determine where the flowers should go within the field of Quince leaves. I always kept the color palette close by at every step so I could begin "see" the finished product in my mind's eye.
This drawing serves as a cutting template as well as a guide on which to put the entire piece together before shipping it. Next I rolled out clay slabs and starting the process of cutting the tiles (leaves and flowers):
Once I had cut and fired some of the tiles, I began glazing. Often I get so involved in a project that I completely forget to take photos and with this one, I have nothing to show of the glazing or firing. So, we skip ahead to the stage when I began to put all of the cut, fired, glazed, and fired tiles all together:
Something that came up during glazing is how dark or light the flowers should be. I left them until the end so I could see them against the rest of the piece:
The client had chosen a yellow center inside each flower but once I'd made them I thought the yellow didn't work as well as we'd hoped. She agreed so I remade the flowers.
Once remade I aimed for a mix of light, medium and dark, but then found that the darker ones were too dark:
Although I kept a few medium-dark glazed flowers, I far preferred those on the lighter side which show the line detail. Plus the medium-light tone works better with the overall color scheme. This meant making a few more flowers and glazing them a bit lighter.
And .... the whole piece put together:
This flower ordeal is something that is very hard to predict and while I always try to include a buffer in the cost for such re-workings, it's almost impossible to know just what kind of thing will arise. This the kind of thing that pushes me over budget. As always when this happens, what can I do but just avoid thinking about it too much and focus on doing my best work. I really want the customer to have something truly beautiful, not something almost right but not quite. 5 years is far too long to wait for something good but not great!!
And of course my signature which I so often forget but this time the client specifically requested it:
Sndbox Steward