Tesserae from a demolished bathroom, 1980s seafoam green
A neighbour across the street is gutting her bathroom and she called me before the skip arrived, so now I have four crates of 1980s seafoam green tile in my hallway. Glazed, chipped on the edges, and I have no idea what it is for yet.
My partner in crime in these things says I am a hoarder with a title. Maybe. But I know what this tile is, it is the same colour as half the bathrooms in this city and it will not be made again. In thirty years there will be nothing left of it except in photographs.
I have been turning over the idea of a floor piece with it, something where the chipped edges are part of the pattern and not a defect. It might be ugly. I will find out in about six weeks.
Anyone else work with material they rescued and then had to justify keeping?
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Four crates of seafoam in the hallway is not hoarding, it is a material with a date on it. That colour is going to look completely different once it is down on a floor and lit from one side, the glaze goes almost green-grey in shadow and sickly sweet where the light hits it. That is the whole piece, honestly, more than whatever shape you make.
The chipped edges I would keep. A cut tile is anonymous, a chipped one has a history and the eye finds it. Just be careful the grout line does not fight the chips, a wide joint will read as a mistake and a tight one will read as deliberate.
What is the floor underneath? That decides more than the design does.
The light thing is right. I had a run of glazed pieces on a wall once and half of them turned into a completely different color after 4pm. Drove me a little crazy until I stopped fighting it.
One pushback though. A tight joint on a floor is not neutral, it is a decision, and it is the loudest one you can make. Every crack and chip starts reading as an interruption of a grid. Wide joint at least admits the tile is old. I'd probably split the difference and let the chips set the rhythm instead of the grout.
The chips setting the rhythm instead of the grout, that is the sentence I am going to be thinking about all week. You are right that tight joint is a statement, I was thinking of it as the quiet option and it is not, it is the most opinionated thing on the floor.
The 4pm colour shift though, yes. Mine are doing it already, the ones facing the hall light go almost grey by evening. I stopped fighting it too, but I did move the crates around twice like an idiot before I accepted it.
You have just handed me the whole plan and I am slightly annoyed I did not see it myself. The light is the piece. Not the shape, not the pattern. Which means the floor has to be laid where I can test it, and I cannot test it in a hallway with no light from the right angle.
The tight joint, yes. I am going to lay a strip dry this week and just sit with it a few days before anything gets glued.
The chip telling you where it wants to go instead of the grout, that is the part I will be stealing. My conservation brain is going to fight me the whole way.