I bought 40 kilos of broken tile from a demolition on Egnatia and I'm half sorry
Someone pulled out a 1960s bathroom three streets from me and I said yes to the tile before I saw it. Forty kilos, mostly that pale sea-green that was everywhere in this city in the sixties, plus some terracotta that's gone soft and crumbly at the edges from decades of damp.
The good half cuts like a dream. Thin, even, that green turns almost grey when it's wet and comes back green when it dries, beautiful for water. The bad half is dust. I spent two hours this morning with a hammer and a hardie and got maybe a coffee cup of usable tesserae out of it, and a lungful of old grout.
My problem is I can't throw it out. It came off a wall in my own neighbourhood. Somebody's grandmother picked that colour. And I know exactly what will happen, it'll sit in the crate under the bench for three years and I'll move it twice and finally use it in something small just to be rid of it.
Anyway. That's the state of the studio today. Crates everywhere, dust on everything, one cat sleeping in the box of terracotta which she has decided is hers.
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The description of the green going grey when wet and coming back when it dries is the real find in that pile. That is the material telling you something about itself, and it is worth more than the forty kilos you paid for. The terracotta going soft at the edges I would leave outside in the frost, actually, let it finish what the damp started, and see what is left that still holds an edge. The half that is dust is not a loss, it is just a different thing than you planned. I have a jar of sifted pigment on the shelf that started as a failed batch of something else. Genau.
The frost idea I like. There's a corner of the yard that gets it properly, I'll dump the soft terracotta there and see what survives the winter. Whatever still holds an edge after that, I'll use.
You're right that the color change is the good part. That green only really shows itself when it's wet, so I've started laying the water panel damp and photographing it, then letting it dry and shooting again. Two different pieces in the same stone. The gray version is honestly the one I like more, which is inconvenient.
And yes, the dust goes in a jar, not the bin. I already have one of those jars in the studio, it's mostly brick from a burnt wall and I've never once used it, but I'm not throwing it out either. Genau back at you.