Have you seen back-painted glass?

I had a conversation over the weekend with someone who couldn't decide on a back splash material. Her kitchen's beautiful, and modern. It's a symphony of horizontal planes and sleek surfaces. I love it. Despite my growing reputation as the mosaic guy, when I first saw the space a mosaic isn't what popped into my head. Instead of a mosaic, I suggested that she consider sheets of back-painted glass.

Back-painted glass is exactly what it sounds like it would be. It's a sheet of 1/4", 3/8", 1/2" or 3/4" thick clear glass. The back of the glass is painted and then baked on. As a result, you look through a layer of clear glass at a color in the back. It's a terrific effect, the color appears to float.

Glass comes in 130" x 84" sheets so it's very possible to cover whole areas with seamless glass. Sometimes, back-painted glass gets installed as smaller panels, but that's almost always an aesthetic call.

The photos scattered across this post are from Soda Glass, a northern California coated glass manufacturer. They have retailers in San Francisco and in Sacramento. Other manufacturers and suppliers across the US, Canada and Europe are plentiful. Nothing else looks or behaves like this material. I cannot for the life of me imagine it in anything but a really minimalist setting. Am I wrong?

Mosaic Art and Style: Designs for Living Environments

Mosaic Art and Style celebrates the integration of mosaics into the landscape of our daily lives. Not content to create fine art mosaics that hang on a wall in respectful silence, artists are creating architectural installations, sculpture and furniture that enliven our living environments. The ancient Greek and Romans knew 3,000 years ago that mosaics were the perfect melding of functionality, durability and beauty. Artists throughout the world are now redefining ancient traditions and transforming environments with individual fragments known as tesserae.

So begins JoAnn Locktov's Mosaic Art and Style, a curated exhibit of contemporary mosaic art in book form. Mosaic Art and Style is a world survey of mosaic installations featuring the work of 75 artists who carry this ancient art form from back splashes to back yards, from gardens to guest rooms and from floors to furniture. The work in Locktov's book encompasses and embraces the wide range of mosaic art as it's practiced today. These works are alternately compelling and whimsical, sometimes contemplative and always dynamic.

Judi Brennan

Mosaic Room: Overview Concrete block, cement, netting, 
ceramic tile. 36' x 21'

photo courtesy of the artist

Judi Brennan

Mosaic Room: sofa, wall and lamp detail Concrete block,
 netting, ceramic tile

photo courtesy of the artist

Judi Brennan

Mosaic Room: wall with window detail concrete block, 
cement, netting, ceramic tile

photo courtesy of the artist

Locktov's book is split into two parts. The first half consists of in-depth profiles of the work of 17 different artists. She shows their work in page after page of beautifully shot photography with generous breaks to delve into the creative processes behind the work pictured.

Richard Moss

Cityscape, New York City marble, granite, smalti, ceramic. 34" x 22"

photo courtesy of John Polak Photography

Richard Moss

Ostian Sea (detail) semiprecious stone, marble, granite, 
ebonized cherry wood. 34" diameter

photo courtesy of John Polak Photography

Richard Moss

Ostian Sea (in situ) semiprecious stone, marble, granite, 
ebonized cherry wood. 34" diameter

photo courtesy of John Polak Photography

The second section is a gallery of both public and private spaces. In the gallery, Locktov showcases the work of 58 artists. Just as with the first section, these works are integrated into life and into real environments. Whether they're in a school, a restaurant, a hospital or a park, the work profiled in the gallery challenge and delight in equal measure.

Mosaic Art and Style is filled with more than 350 photographs of some great art and it's intended to be an inspirational resource for artists, designers, homeowners and anyone who's looking for some insight into what's possible.

Karen Thompson

Kitchen --Private Residence 50 square feet

photo courtesy of Russel MacMasters

JoAnn Locktov is a public relations consultant to mosaic artists, tile companies and designers. She's also a passionate admirer and tireless enthusiast for mosaic art. Her fervor is contagious and every page of Mosaic Art and Style is imbued with it. Mosaic Art and Style is a welcome and treasured addition to my library, so much so that it's taken up residence on the end of my sofa. All the better to page through it when the mood strikes. Get a copy.

Let's keep Labor in Labor Day

And by that I mean an appreciation for labor, both the organized and the casual kind. It's become fashionable to ignore the accomplishments of the Labor Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but every single working adult today owes those brave men and women a tremendous debt. They put their lives on the line to guarantee themselves and their descendants a better life.

The Andrew Carnegies and Henry Clay Fricks of the world left a great legacy and they accomplished great things. However, it was their immigrant labor force and their refusal to be treated like slaves any longer that left a more lasting and widespread mark on our culture. Labor Day was intended to be a day to commemorate those same, unionized workers. This link, from the US Department of Labor, gives a brief explanation of why today is a US holiday.

The American Labor movement has been controversial since its violent birth well over a century ago. The last 30 years of American politics and economic practice have done a thorough job of demonizing organized labor and its history, but it's a lie. It's a campaign of lies actually and it's been unrelenting. But at the end of the day, Exxon and IBM did not come up with the five-day, 40-hour work week out of the goodness of their hearts. Just about every idea you have and I have about work and life balance came about at the insistence of organized labor. Despite what you might think of the AFL-CIO or the UAW, you're still standing on their shoulders. History works like that.

There was some great literature that came out of that era. If you've never read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, or Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives, pick up a copy of either. Or both.






Better yet, pick up a copy of Paul Krause's The Battle for Homestead, 1880-1892. You'll never look at your work life the same way again.






I'll put away my Norma Rae routine for now. I'm seeing clients today, so there's no rest for this American laborer. Whatever you're doing today, I hope it's fun.

Dirty money, filthy lucre; a designer's confession

A long, long time ago, I worked for a fancy schmancy kitchen design studio. We worked the very high end of the market and with the help of a whole lot of smoke and mirrors, we had a reputation as the high class joint where somebody with money to burn could go to get a kitchen or a bath straight out of a magazine. In fact, a lot of our stuff ended up in magazines. We had a reputation for being an ethical, service-oriented firm peopled with designers who were completely committed to their clients' needs, wants and whims.

I worked there for two years and in those two years I worked on a couple of interesting projects, but most of it was just overpriced exercises in more is more. It was pretty soul-deadening. My big project though, was a home that was under construction for the entire two years that I was at the fancy schmancy studio. It was a grand home; a complete, period-perfect reproduction of a plantation house. We were contracted to design all of the cabinetry and casework in the entire house. It was a tremendous opportunity to learn how to design such things as coffered ceilings and wainscoted walls. It took a year-and-a-half to complete the designs.

Finally, when we priced out all of the cabinetry and casework the first time, the numbers came back at 1.3 million dollars. And no, million is not a typo. Eventually, we edited down the designs in the project and got it to a more palatable but still galling $400,000. A couple of hours before my boss and I were to present that revised proposal to the architects, he and I met to review the numbers one last time. When I was digging through the internal, itemized price sheets I came across an $85,000 charge that didn't have any kind of history or back up. The $85,000 had been folded into the total and since the client never saw the itemized back ups, no one would really know that it was in there. I asked what that charge was and he informed me that it was to pay for the builder's kitchen renovation.

I wanted to vomit. I am not a naif, I know that payola and kick backs go on all the time in my industry. But I'd never seen so naked a grab in my life. What ever respect I had for my boss or the contractor went out the window at that very moment. I swallowed my revulsion and made it through the meeting. I went along with it and said nothing. I was a junior designer on the project and I told myself that it wasn't my place to make waves about the graft I'd stumbled across. I left the firm a couple of weeks after that, and I never got to see the completed house. It didn't matter by then. In my mind the whole thing was tainted and I had a hard enough time looking at the plans, seeing the real thing would have done me in. Many years later, that situation still bothers me.

The payola, the graft, I stumbled across that afternoon wasn't an isolated case. I don't mean just at that studio either. "Paid referrals" are a common practice throughout the industry and I react to them now the way I did then. I'm repulsed. I think the practice is sleazy and unethical. I don't pay for referrals and I won't accept money for one. Take the money you would pay me and charge your customer less. What a concept!

I'm hooked into a network of tradespeople and suppliers I know and trust. When I refer my clients to my tile setter, or my electrician, or my lighting supplier, I want them to know that I am referring to the best person I know for the job at hand. I want them to know that they will be taken care of. Their job will be completed as promised and they will be charged a fair, though not necessarily a low, price. I want them to know too that the fair price they're paying doesn't include a kick back to me.

I was reminded of that whole situation this week when I got a phone call from an interior designer I'd never met. She had two clients who wanted to renovate a kitchen but that a kitchen plan was beyond her skill set. As we talked about the job she was proposing, she told me that her clients wanted something nice, but they were pretty price-sensitive. She then told me that she was willing to waive her usual 10% referral fee and "only" wanted me to tack $1000 onto the job total for her. Only. This was a sentence or two after she described them as price-sensitive.

I told her that I'd love to talk to her clients but that I wasn't going to give her a dime. There was a stoney silence on the other end of the line. "Really?" she asked in a near whisper. "Why is that?"

"Because it's sleazy," I said. "It's unethical and it makes projects cost more than they should. If you're any good at what you do, you should be able to make a living from the fees and commissions you earn. Payola is dirty money, it's a used car salesman move. I'm not a used car salesman. Are you?"

"Ummm," she nearly whispered, "maybe we're not a good match."

It was the smartest thing she said during the three minutes she was in my life.

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