Iakobos Collection

A walk through of the Iakobos Collection exhibition

Restaurant Treat

If you’re in the DFW area, you must venture over to eat at Rise no.1. It is moderately priced and you’ll love their souffles. The best part is the souffles are served in pottery made by local artists. One such artist is a friend of mine whom I studied with, Conor Muldoon.

His pieces compliment the quaint French country atmosphere of the restaurant. Enjoy and if you love your dinnerware some of the pieces are for purchase. How cool it that? Eat and take your bowl home!

Nonstop Taping

After hours and hours of nonstop taping, finally all eight pieces are ready to grout… 32 sides… 21 tiles per side plus tops… over 650 plus tiles…

Eight pieces, 650 plus tiles taped

Not Done Taping

After the mortar is allowed to set over a 24hr period, it was time to move into the next stage. This stage was brutal… tape, tape, and more tape. I think I ended up going through 5 rolls of painter’s tape. Every tile needed to be covered in preperation of grouting.

Each tile is taped off to avoid grout

There are grout release agents out there for natural stone, but I didn’t want to introduce a new variable that might change the surface color of the earthenware tile.

Mortar Phase – Applying Tile

It’s time to put all the pieces together. I suspect I’m about a third of the way to completing the pieces. With the frames built and the tiles glazed, I began the prepping of the building phase by sorting the tiles back into their panel groups. I then mixed mortar and started the tile application process.

Mortar with trowel

Just like any tile installation process, mortar is applied to the backerboard and then the tile placed on the mortar. The tiles are then left to dry for a 24hr period.

Mortar applied to backerboard ready for tiles

Tiles Attached with Mortar Drying

The edges of the pieces are taped with painter’s tape to prevent any mortar from getting on the tiles. It’s a nightmare and virtually impossible to get the mortar off the tiles especially on the highly textured areas. Once the tiles are in place small pieces of tape is used to prevent them from shifting or falling off as they dry.

Everything Takes Longer

The glaze firing went well. I think there were portions of the kiln that fired unevenly which has caused some of the tiles to shrink to different sizes. This is going to be problematic when it comes to putting the form together.

Switching gears, while the kiln was cooling I began to build the interior frames. They are constructed of wood and will have a backerboard attached on the outside so the tile will adhere to the surface. Fortunately I was able to find something called Easyboard which is a lightweight improvement on traditional backerboard.  Not only is it lighter and will reduce the weight of the overall finished pieces but this stuff can be cut with a blade knife, just like cutting foam board. This stuff is truly amazing! Although the Easyboard would help me save some time, everything takes a while when building eight of these forms. There are 32 sides that need to be cut both wood and backerboard plus the eight tops. Once all the pieces are cut I still need to assemble them.

I called on the help of my brother who quickly dubbed himself, “the minion.” We were able to double our efforts but it still took a couple of days to get everything ready for the installation of the tiles.

All effort went towards working that I unfortunately forgot to take any photos of our progress at this stage.

Easyboard - lightweight backerboard attached to outside frame of piece

And We Wait…

Tiles Ready For Glaze Fire

After several long hours of glazing and then loading the kiln, the tiles are ready for there final testament in the kiln. Again we’ll cross our fingers and hope that nothing goes wrong. While the tiles are firing I’ll be preparing interior frames for the tiled forms.

Kiln Loaded for Glaze Fire

Preparing for Glaze Fire

Now that the tiles are bisqued, they still need to go back into the kiln for a glaze firing. The tiles are again sorted into their groups. This will help with visualizing the composition of the glazes.

Pulling Tiles from Tile Setters and Sorting

Tiles in Groups

Cross Your Fingers – Bisque Fire

All 500 plus tiles were loaded into the kiln earlier this week for their bisque firing. Let’s hope none of them break or blow up.

Tiles ready for bisque fire

Update: Bisque fire successful with zero tiles lost! Yeah!!