Tile Of Martinez's posts with tag: tile martinez
|  | Southwest corners of Main and Castro (LaTapatia)--This building's brick and tile is Livermore Fire Brick Co. and has unusual iron flecks in both brick and tile. Magic Theater building on east side of Castro near Green & building next to it. Gazette building on Estudillo near Escobar. Main Street brick building. Hook building corner Ferry and Main. Much of this tile cannot be identified because it would have been custom, although most is probably Batchelder and Cal. Art Tile Co. |
| | These buildings have "Tropico" tiles, that are a mottled green. Tropico Potteries existed from 1920 - 1923, when it was bought by Gladding McBean. The Gladding McBean company introduced some tile designs of its own, but at the same time continued through the 1920s to manufacture some of the old patterns that Tropico Potteries had originated. So there is no way to tell - except if you know the date of the particular building - whether the tiles were made before or after GMcB took over the operation. The Tropico factory (now in Glendale) was the site of the first manufacturing of art tiles in California, starting about 1901 or so. At least three companies established manufacturing there and then went out of business at that location prior to the establishment of Tropico Potteries. (One of the companies was Western Art Tile).
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| | A great adaptive use of a beautiful building that is on the State Historic Register. Theis indicatively yellowish brick is from Livermore Fire Bricks Company and it is the unglazed ceramic detailing came from Livermore Fire Bricks as well, per Dan Mosier of Calbrick.net, USGS Minerologist, and author of books on historic mining communities. Livermore Firebricks was known to make ceramics. Note advertisement in this issue of Architect and Engineer for Livermore Bricks. It is unlike Gladding McBean to have unglazed, low fire terra cotta. |
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