A little History

In a world where mass-production is the norm, bespoke, one-off items are, it seems, only for the wealthy and most discerning of buyers. Handmade goods, especially those made in an advanced western nation like the UK, are invariably expensive, largely due to the costs of labour, and require commissioning skills and an understanding of the artist and materials. While this may be the case for many arts, Tile Decals has managed to debunk the theories and offers an individual service at remarkably affordable prices.

Tile Decals, as its name suggests, started life providing a transfer service; designing, creating and supplying waterslide transfers to tile retailers. One of the company’s founders, Chris Walklate, has a well-earned pedigree in tile technology. He studied ceramics before embarking on a career at some of the best known ceramic and tile manufacturers in the UK – Pilkington’s, Johnson, Wedgwood and Ceramic Prints – then set up his own company with partner Gillian Roberts in 1996. At the time transfers were still popular, as they had been since Victorian times, and tile retailers often had their own kilns so that they could offer their customers a value-added service – applying decoration to tiles to order to complement standard field tiles.

While Tile Decals still offers a transfer service, this now represents about 10% of the company’s business, and most of the decoration is done at Tile Decals’ own studio as most retailers gave up their kilns some time ago. But Chris and Gill have taken the art of tile decoration much further than the application of waterslide transfers. “We can decorate practically any glass or ceramic substrate,” says Chris “We don’t manufacture ceramic tiles ourselves as this can be done much more cheaply and efficiently elsewhere. But we can take almost any tile and add a bespoke design to it.” Methods include acid etching, screen printing, and the application of glass and frits to create colour and texture. Patterns can be almost anything you like from photographic images to baroque swirls or modern geometrics.

For tile retailers this means they can buy in standard field tiles and offer their customers a complementary decorated tile of their own design. The tiles can also be cut, of course, to create strips, tacos or listellos, for example. Tile Decals can provide retailers with display boards showing samples of ideas, textures, finishes, etc, using its own designs which are simply priced so that retailers and customers can easily work out costings.

The range of design variables is considerable, with glass playing an increasingly important part in the work carried out by Tile Decals. They can create bespoke glass strips, for instance, that would complement natural stone or ceramic. They can also create complete glass panels and recently produced a glass panel for a bathroom featuring a hand drawn image from Lord of the Rings. But designs can also be modernistic. Glass tiles or borders can be produced using texture, both in and on the glass, foils and colours. Subtle detail can create a distinctive highlight against today’s popular grey and black minimalist interiors.

Chris and Gill’s technical expertise is apparent in the finished products. Even though what they produce is handmade, with all cutting, texturing and application of colour carried out by hand in the studio, the results are perfect, allowing Tile Decal products to be used in the most precise modern projects. Capacity isn’t a problem either. The TileDecals studio, tucked away off the high street in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, houses four large kilns, three of which can be fired up to four times a day. Decorated tiles can be produced up to 850mm by 600mm in size, and usually within a few days.

The company can already offer nationwide delivery via its distributors so has decided the time is right to broadcast their services to tile retailers. To this end the company will be exhibiting at The Tile & Stone Show at the end of this month. This is the first show they have ever exhibited at so they are slightly apprehensive about the best way to display their capabilities. There is little doubt that their tiles will draw people in however. Retailers, interior designers and architects will soon recognise the potential that Tile Decals offers.