Handmade Tile: Design, Create, and Install Custom Tiles

Handmade Tile is a contemporary guide for ceramic artists and anyone interested in custom tile installations—from making, designing, and decorating to designing your space and installation.

No matter how many years of experience you have as a ceramic artist or how many home-improvement projects you’ve tackled, nothing prepares you for the unique world of ceramic tile. From concept and design, through firing and installation, ceramic tiling is one of the few places in a home where art is permanently installed as a feature of a room.

In Handmade Tile, Forrest Lesch-Middelton shares everything he’s learned as the founder and owner of the custom tile business FLM Ceramics and Tile. From his years as a one-man operation to his current production facility, Forrest has seen it all and helps you every step of the way. Whether you want to make your own tile, or want to use artistic and custom-made tile in your home, this book has everything you need.

Key features of the book include:

• Making Tile: key tools, rolling, cutting, extruding
• Decorating: glazes, image transfer, cuerda seca, underglaze, slip
• Designing Your Space: tile in context, choosing your tile, codes and standards
• Installation: removing old tile, backing, preparing surfaces, setting, grouting

Galleries and interviews with today’s top workings artists in tile round out the package. Featured artists include Allison Bloom, Boris Aldridge, Disc Interiors, PV Tile, and more. 

Forrest Lesch-Middelton is the owner of FLM Ceramics and Tile in Petaluma, CA. His work has been widely featured, including the cover of Ceramics Monthly, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, and American Craft Magazine. In 2013, Ceramics Monthly and Ceramic Arts Daily chose Forrest as “The Ceramic Artist of the Year.” Forrest is the former president of The Association of Clay and Glass Artists, a graduate of Alfred University’s ceramics program as well as Utah State University’s MFA program, a former resident of Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, a McKnight Fellow at Northern Clay Center, a recipient of the Creative Work Fund Grant, and former program director for Sonoma Community Center Ceramics. Forrest has taught at various Bay Area colleges and has lectured and demonstrated extensively throughout the United States, including workshops at The Penland School of Craft, The Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Syracuse University, Greenwich House Pottery, the California College of the Arts, and The Northern Clay Center.