How we make our tiles
Respect the past Live in the present Make something that lasts
From the first wax carving to the final polish, every tile is made by hand.
Timeless motifs, freshly interpreted.
Our patterns respect tradition while answering to a modern eye. A motif that has been drawn for centuries still has to earn its place in a room built this year.
We sit with a new pattern for weeks, sometimes months. The test is never whether it looks current. It is whether it will still belong in the room in twenty years.
Carving the wax master.
Each pattern is carved by hand, just once, into custom sculptor’s wax using simple tools and a flame. Every cut is made with the final casting in mind, anticipating how molten bronze will find and hold even the smallest recess.
From that master we take a mould, and from the mould a series of hard patterns, exact positives of the first carving. The patterns are arranged on the mould tree and packed into ultrafine sand, leaving the crisp impressions the molten bronze will fill.
Every tile since is cast from those impressions. What arrives at your door isn’t a copy of a copy. It is a true impression of the original carving.
Into the crucible.
Bronze ingots enter the crucible and emerge molten, held precisely at pouring temperature. Humans first began melting copper and tin together thousands of years ago. The fundamentals of the process have changed remarkably little.
Solid metal, poured hot, holding detail as only bronze can. It is the reason sculptors have trusted it with their finest work for centuries.
The pour.
Poured by hand into the mould tree. Seconds to do; years of practice to do well.
Too cool and the bronze stops short of the finest recesses. Too hot and it fights the mould. The window is narrow, and it is read by eye.
Excavation.
The tiles emerge still joined to the casting tree, rough and dark, giving little hint of the finished piece that will one day be set into your home.
Each tile is cut free by hand, inspected and sorted before finishing begins. What looks raw at this stage already contains every detail of the finished piece. The next steps simply reveal it.
A multi-step refining process.
Each tile passes through a multi-step refining process, worked by hand to bring out its face, edges and individual character. One pass at a time.
Once off the casting tree, each tile’s edges are smoothed by hand. The surface is then refined through a proprietary process of our own: the source of the reflective character and the particular feel in the hand that distinguish a Foundry Art tile.
No two are exactly alike. Subtle variations in texture, tone and surface character are a natural result of casting and finishing by hand, evidence of the process behind every piece.
Buff and polish.
We buff the tiles, brush on a protective coat of wax, and hand-polish them the morning they are sent to you.
Ours are the last hands to touch each tile before yours.
From there, the bronze continues to evolve. It darkens and brightens with time and touch, catching light differently as the surface develops its own character.
Foundry Art
It only gets better.
The tile we ship is the youngest it will ever be. Because it is solid bronze, it continues to evolve long after it leaves our studio: darkening, mellowing and catching light with a depth that manufactured finishes can’t replicate.