Lady Marmoleum

I just got a hot lead on Marmoleum floors by Forbo. Forbo is a Swedish company and they've been making Marmoleum for the last 100 years. Generically, Marmoleum is linoleum; the original resilient floor. It's making a serious comeback due to the innovations and energetic marketing of the Forbo company.

In Forbo's capable hands, linoleum branded as Marmoleum is fresh, new and dare I say it? Hip.

I mean, look at this stuff. Lower East Side tenements do not come to mind when I see these photos and I understand why Forbo dispensed with the word linoleum.

Marmoleum is hip and now because it's bright and new, but it's also hip and now because it's green and sustainable. It's made today the way it was always made. From linseed oil, wood flour and rosins that are pressed into a jute backing. It's non-toxic, VOC-free, biodegradable when the time comes and virtually indestructible until then.

Due to its linseed oil content, it gets harder the longer its exposed to air and it's also naturally anti-microbial. What's not to love?

You can find local sources for Marmoleum through Forbo's website. If your market's anything like mine, it's not too tough to find. You can expect to pay between $5.50 and $7.50 a square foot for materials.

More on the radiation NON-story

Last week, I wrote about the New York times article that claimed falsely that granite countertops were somehow dangerously radioactive. In a case of anecdotes trumping evidence, the Times article didn't enlighten, it alarmed. In the course of the last week, the story grew legs and now it seems that everywhere I look online, I see a reference to that article. The Marble Institute of America had this to say:

In the past few days, a television video has circulated online that has created widespread consumer confusion and concern about radiation levels occurring in
natural granites used for residential countertops. The report suggests some countertops may pose health risks, ignoring years of legitimate and independent scientific research that has concluded that natural stone is perfectly safe to use in homes.

It’s misleading to even hint that we would knowingly sell a product that might harm consumers! The report was prompted by a group that claims to be independent, but is actually funded by two companies that manufacture synthetic stone countertops made of quartz gravel, resins, coloring agents and other chemicals.

Unlike these competing synthetic products, granite is not manufactured in a plant by combining quartz gravel, resins, coloring agents and other chemicals. Throughout the years, consumers have been drawn to natural stone’s beauty, durability, cleanliness and safety.

It’s outrageous that manufacturers of synthetic stone countertops would use a front
group like this to scare consumers. It is also alarming that manufacturers of a
competing product feel they can only compete by groundlessly creating fear about
natural stone, which is safe, beautiful and superior.

In the last paragraph of their statement, the Institute mentions a "front group" used by the "manufacturers of synthetic stone countertops." The group they're talking about is something called the Solid Surface Alliance and their website is here. There are probably other groups such as that one, but I hope not. The Solid Surface Alliance claims that it exists "to provide consumers information on solid surface counter tops, as well as the other uses of solid surface." With that out of their system, the rest of their large website is dedicated solely to blowing smoke and spreading mis-information. It reads like something that Bill O'Reilly would come up with. The hysterical tone, the manipulated statistics and missing contexts are straight out of the Fox News guidebook. They beat the radon drum incessantly of course and even go so far as to link the purchase of natural stone to supporting the Taliban. It's sad, really.

If you have concerns about the radioactivity of household granite, please spend some time reading the Marble Institute of America's website. Rational thinking and facts ought to trump all, but unfortunately that doesn't always happen.

Poppin' my cork

Check out the new face of cork floors. Zoom in on that image and ooooh and ahhhh. That's the newest incarnation of a cork floor and it's a cork mosaic floor.

Here's how it works. Corks cut for use as wine stoppers are thinly sliced and glued to a square foot sheet of paper. Then they're installed with mastic and grouted in the same way one would install any other mosaic tile.

Cork is resilient, water-resistant, sound deadening, flexible and renewable --all pluses in my book. Where this stuff really starts to shine though is that it can be stained to any color you'd like (that makes sense because after all, it's made from the same cellulose that any wood product is). BUT, it can also be sealed and used in a wet area like a shower floor or a spa.

This is too cool. I've never met a mosaic I didn't like and this stuff's great from every angle.

These tiles are made by the Canadian firm, the Jelinek Cork Group. Jelinek has an extensive list of cork product offerings and I agree with them that cork doesn't get the attention in the US that it deserves.

In addition to their well-done website, Jelinek operates and online store and outlet called The Corkhouse. At the Corkhouse you can browse through their flooring offerings, but where else but The Cork House are you going to find a cork purse or a cork hat?

Herculean Herculaneum

I was pretty amazed by the level of preservation in Pompeii, despite its having been picked over so thoroughly in the last couple hundred years. Herculaneum on the other hand, has more of its architecture intact and entire homes filled with original mosaics and frescoes. I was blown away by Herculaneum. So much so that I want to start a movement in the decorative arts. I was going to call it Pompeiian Revival, but Herculaneum Revival is making more sense to me after having been there.

Pompeii pomp

I spent a day combing through the ancient ruins of Pompeii a week ago and came away humbled and moved to say the least. The classical Romans had surprisingly contemporary tastes and sensibilities. Either that or everything, and I mean everything, really is retro.

More great floors

OK kids, let me trot out some more vacation photos. I noticed a lot of really interesting majolica patterns in some really old buildings that still looked as great as they must have when they were installed. These are patterns that are still available for the most part, only these babies are the originals --the oldest one here is about 700 years old. Bet you can't guess which one it is. Any of these patterns would look terrific in a house today, despite the bright colors and wild patterns that a lot of people object to for being "too trendy." Pattern and color are your friends and these patterns from an old, old villa in Ravello make that statement pretty eloquently.

New directions in tile

I spent Tuesday at Coverings, the tile and stone industries' joint trade show. It was held in Orlando this year and man! Whatta show! I have been meaning to write at length about the many amazing things I saw, but this work thing keeps getting in the way.

Anyhow, the big thing in tile this year is Victorian-ish fabric patterns on wall tile. These fabric patterns show up in metallics like gold and platinum (made with real gold and platinum by the way) and in charcoal gray and blacks. It's pretty neat stuff, and it looks as if it's a 2008 take on the old metallic, flocked wallpaper of the '60s and '70s.

The images I'm including here are from a company called Iris Ceramica. As you can probably tell from their photographs, Iris is an Italian firm. But as you look at these photos, keep in mind that this is wall tile and it's being used in way tile hasn't been used in quite a while, if ever. These are large-size, rectangular tiles and you will not find them at Home Depot any time soon. However, based on the omnipresence of these wallpaper-y wall tiles at the show this week, it will be interesting to see how they translate and trickle down through the market.

Terrific terrazzo

Florida seems to be the land of the terrazzo floor. Or at least it used to be. I live in a part of Florida that was essentially built out by the mid-seventies, and the typical house in this part of the world is an 1800 square foot, cinder block ranch house. I remember being mortified by them when I first settled here but in time, the Florida rancher has grown on me. When the Florida ranch house was hitting its stride as a style, it marked the culmination of house building technology of the time.

Prior to the mid-'50s, houses built here were timber frame homes that sat on pylons about two feet off the ground. These frame homes had framed floors. For the most part; homes here don't have foundations. This is due to the proximity of the water table to the surface of the earth, and it's also due to the staggering volumes of rain water that fall during the rainy season. So without a foundation, traditional home builders here simply made sure that a home didn't sit on the ground. Around the middle of the last century though, somebody figured out how to pour a slab foundation from concrete and to build a home directly on that slab. Enter the Florida rancher.

Almost all of these sitting-on-a-slab ranch homes had terrazzo floors. Terrazzo is a flooring material that the Romans perfected and the terrazzo floors all over Florida are essentially the same thing the Romans used. A slurry of concrete and decorative stone aggregates is spread over a prepared surface and then the mixture is leveled. Once cured, the top layer of the concrete and aggregate mix is ground off; leaving a smooth, shiny floor with a distinctive pattern of random stone pieces in it. A typical, vintage terrazzo floor looks like the image to the left.

The native Floridians I know shudder at the thought of a Terrazzo floor. I think they're beautiful though. I suppose that people grow to resent what they grew up with and my native Floridian friends' bad reaction to Terrazzo is the same as my urge to vomit when I see hex signs or other Pennsylvania Dutch accouterments.

Traditional terrazzo is a labor-intensive and as building trade labor has become more valuable, the price of a new terrazzo floor became prohibitive and at some point in the mid-'70s, terrazzo was largely abandoned.

But terrazzo is making a comeback. It's starting to show up all over the place in public spaces and in private homes. The new terrazzo is a bit different than the vintage stuff and in a lot of ways it's a better deal. It's certainly less expensive. New terrazzo uses epoxy resins instead of concrete as a base. That's the first difference. In using an epoxy, the resulting floor is non-porous and highly stain resistant. Since the base material is manufactured and is essentially moldable plastic, it can be made in virtually any color. In a nod to the idea of sustainability, the aggregates used in the new stuff tend to be things like recycled glass and cast off stone from quarries. The new terrazzos have the same shiny stone feel of the old ones and they are virtually maintenance-free.

Since they are no longer being used as a cheap floor in mass-produced housing, the new terrazzos are as often as not designed and installed by true craftspeople and artists. Here are a few examples of this new terrazzo. In the hands of a competent professional, the sky's the limit. Or should that be the floor's the limit?

You can learn all about the new terrazzo floors and see some great examples of them in actual homes and businesses at the website of the National Terrazzo and Mosaic Association (www.ntma.com).

It's trade show season --woo-hoo!

Every year, the tile and stone industries join forces to put on a trade show that makes my mouth water. "Coverings" is taking place in Orlando this year from April 29th through May 2nd. I cannot wait to get there. The photos littering my entry today are highlights from last year's show.

The kitchen to the left is a beautiful room on a whole lotta levels. It's open, airy and relies on the wall mosaics and floor tile patterns to add interest. This makes for a simply furnished room that's in no way Spartan or empty. Were it not for the tile work, this room would look positively bare.

There is so much to the world of tile and it's unfortunate that most peoples' ideas of what's out there comes from the tile aisle at the home center. True, most of what I'm showing here and most of what I'll see at Coverings this year is the extremely high end of the market. However, interesting needn't mean outrageously expensive automatically. Even if a lot of what I see at the show is aspirational, it's always good to see the high end of the market. An awareness of the high end helps you buy better knock offs. The styles that end up in a home center started out years before at the high end and trickled down. Sort of the same way that fashion or cars or any other consumer product does.

When I was registering this afternoon, I looked through the list of exhibitors and to call it extensive is the understatement of the century. Among the hundreds of tile manufacturers and stone importers are a fair number of Chinese businesses. I would say that the percentage of obviously Chinese concerns is approaching 10 per cent of the exhibitors. I suppose it's a reflection of the world economy and China's place in it. That China is a growing world power doesn't concern me necessarily, but I do find their presence at these trade events to be interesting.

Their emerging economies and sensibilities haven't quite figured out how to attract the eye of western designers, I think I can say that pretty safely. When you compare the booths of the Chinese manufacturers to those of the Italians, the Spainish or any other international firm who's been around for a while it's pretty jarring. The Chinese exhibitors tend to display their wares in booths that look like a grouping of folding tables. Period. The Italian booths in particular tend to look as if the muses themselves decided to go into the tile business.

More curiously still, the Italians have been making mosaics since the dawn of western civ. True, the Chinese are no strangers to ceramics, but it was the Italians who made tile into an art form. Italian mosaic tile in particular sets the standard. In my office are some samples of Sicis glass tile from Venice (http://www.sicis.com/). The families of northern Italy have been making glass tile since the Venetians figured out how to make colored glass a thousand years ago. The formulas that went into the glass sample on my desk have been passed down from generation to generation for hundreds of years and the result is an iridescent blue-violet that looks good enough to eat. Needless to say, the per square foot cost is pretty high.

However, in a box on the floor of my office is a new shipment of mosaic tiles in iridescent colors. There is a blue-violet in there that's a dead ringer for the pedigreed Italian stuff. Side by side, I would have to be told which one is which. But the big difference is that the new samples I have are made in China and they cost less than a third of the good stuff. Hmmm.

Flooring fun facts!

I spent the better part of this afternoon in a flooring showroom preselecting some options for a client. The focus of my excursion was a kitchen floor and I wanted to whittle down their options a bit to keep them from being overwhelmed when we go back together later on this week. The options can be staggering to the unitiated, so I like to get an idea of what I want them to see beforehand. We'd already discussed what they were looking for in pretty general terms, so I know the direction I want to head in.

We'd discussed using either natural stone tile or a porcelain tile that looks like natural stone. They are looking for something rustic but not country-fied and I'd suggested a French Pattern, and that's something they want to explore further.

Ceramic Tile: Ceramic floor tile is fired and glazed feldspar and clay. This material gets its surface color and texture from its glaze. Remember that.

Porcelain Tile: Porcelain tile is a kind of ceramic tile. Porcelain is porcelain because it contains the mineral kaolin in addition to feldspar and clay. Kaolin-containing clays are more dense and get fired at higher temperatures, this makes for a stronger tile. Porcelain tiles tend to derive their colors from the clays they're made from rather than glazes on the surface on the finished tile.

Stone Tile: Stone floor tile is usually made from travertine, limestone or marble. Occasionally, some other stones get carved up into flooring --most notably slate-- but for the most part, the big three listed above are it. A lot of times those three names are used interchangeably and erroneously. All three are very different though they are curiously related.

Geology time! All three kinds of stone are made from calcium carbonate and each of them starts with limestone. Limestone is formed at the bottom of bodies of water. Small creatures make their skeletons and shells from calcium carbonate that's dissolved in water. Think of a clamshell only on a much smaller scale. As these wee beasties die, they drift to the bottom of the sea and accumulate. Over millions of years these deposits of calcium carbonate turn to limestone. As the continents slide around some of those deposits get pushed to the surface and then we can turn those gazillion year-old wee beastie skeletons into flooring. Thanks wee-beasties!

BUT when that limestone gets pushed down toward the center of the earth instead of being pushed up, it undergoes a metamorphosis. The high pressure and high temperatures below the surface of the earth make the limestone turn into marble. Then, miraculously enough, that marble gets forced back to the surface. This twice-baked limestone then gets turned into a building material that curls my toes. I love marble so much it hurts sometimes.

Finally, if limestone ends up near the surface and is exposed to running water, the water will dissolve the calcium carbonate that makes up the limestone. When the water reaches a point of saturation and can't absorb any more calcium carbonate, the dissolved minerals precipitate out of the water and form deposits of calcite. These calcite deposits are what we call travertine.

Of those three tile categories; ceramic, porcelain and stone; I will always lean toward natural stone if the choice is left to me. Nothing looks like it and nothing feels like it. Natural stone has a warmth and a texture that the other two strive for but never quite achieve. However, the warmth and texture of natural stone comes at a price. It is softer than ceramic, significantly less so than porcelain. Because the natural stones I'm talking about are made from calcium carbonate, a water-soluble mineral, they are more prone to staining and wearing irregularly. I'm of the mind that these characteristics are pros rather than cons though. I like things that show the effects of normal life. A good travertine floor will never fall apart and if it's installed properly, it will never need to be replaced. I mean the Coliseum in Rome is made from travertine and it's been there for 2,000 years. So what if a floor made from the same material shows wear patterns by the door?

Bonus section: the French Pattern I mentioned at the start of this thing is a traditional pattern used in setting stone floor tiles. Nothing looks quite like it, and tile setters must hate it. I know they charge like they hate it when they're setting one of these patterned floors. Granted, the math gets a little complicated, but it is so worth it. Here's what the pattern looks like in a black and white drawing. In a typical application, size A is 16"x24", size B is 16"x16", size C is 8"x16" and size D is 8"x8". The diagram to the left is a single repeat and there are two As, four Bs, two Cs and four Ds. Those twelve sizes repeat in the pattern shown the whole way across the floor. In a chisled-edge travertine like the example shown above, the effect is as timeless as it is beautiful.

If you're in the market for a new tile floor, even if you don't end up with chisled-edge travertine in a stunning French Pattern, promise me one thing. Promise here and now that you won't set it in a straight forward grid. Life is too short for boring floors and it takes so little effort to do something interesting.