10m2 art nouveau floor with a flowing triple border

One of four floors, bearing all the DNA of art nouveau design, recovered from the same house in Namur, Belgium we present this now fully restored ceramic floor totaling 10 m2 / 107 sq. ft. in surface area.

The floor was manufactured by Societe Anonyme AMAY (Belgique) in the early part of the twentieth century and we include in the photo gallery a scan from their original catalogue showing the field tile in a different palette.

In a cool pastel palette of blues, greys, dusty pink, off-white and chocolate the floor consists of a principal 14cm sq. field tile and a ribbon flowing same size border, taking from the same design and palette as the principal tile. The fluid design of the border beautifully frames and compliments the more classical tessellation of the principal field tiles and these ornate borders are top and tailed by a more geometrically designed half size border which introduces green to the palette.

Old mortar to the reverse and sides removed and years of old wax and dirt from the faces cleaned the floor arrives ready to relay. And this quality ceramic has cleaned beautifully as the high resolution photographs of a random section of around 1.25m2 shows; colours are consistent and the ceramic, 15mm thick, is excellent. A small number of tiles display edge nibbles and small groutable chips but the patina is lovely. This is a floor that demands to be the heroine in any room.

Being a highly fired tile the floor can be laid outside or inside of the home, where it will work efficiently with underfloor heating systems. 

Tile quantities, give or take one or two:-

FIELD (14cm sq) - 355 tiles - 7 m2 /  75 sq. ft

LARGE BORDER - (14cm sq) - 71 tiles plus 3 corners - 1.5 m2

SMALL BORDER -  (14cm x 7cm) - 145 tiles plus 5 corners - 1.4 m2

The other floors recovered from the same house can be found by clicking the links below:-

An 11.5 m2 floral themed art nouveau floor in a pastel palette

A stunning 17.5m2 Belgian ceramic art nouveau floor

A 10.5m2 art nouveau floor with an impressive motif- being restored

NOTE:-
Antique tiles were most commonly made in single or two tile moulds. Before current computer automation methods their moulds were made my hand and the colour slips mixed by eye. Kiln temperatures could also be variable, as could the firing time. The result is that often tiles 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.