Floor Décor
Some Of Our Snazziest Vintage Decorative Art Is Right Under Our Feet
Bold, colorful, and geometrically complex, decorative floor (and wall) tiles seldom fail to add a wow factor to our homes and civic buildings, historic and otherwise. Celebrated for their design intricacy since the 10th century, glazed ceramic floor tiles became as integral to Coral Gables’ Mediterranean Revival architecture as wrought-iron gates, terracotta roofs, arched windows, and asymmetrical massing. Besides, you could dance on them.



HOUSE
As the popularity of decorative tiles grew, so did their manufacture in places like Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts… and Coral Gables. But the Gables was different: it had Cuba as both a neighbor and, crucially, as a ready source of craftspeople skilled at accommodating Merrick’s special design needs.



FOUNTAIN


RESIDENCE
Enter the tile artisans, whose work survives in our historic structures like a veritable catalog of Florida’s 1920s decorative arts. Yet, as Modernism took hold across the country in the 1930s, surface embellishments like tiles were dismissed as superficial – a judgment that today would be considered misguided at best. Individually beautiful, tiles collectively create a group dynamic whereby the whole is greater (and more beautiful) than the sum of its parts. Superficial? Nah! That’s the magic of decorative tiles.
Story written by Bruce Fitzgerald and Karelia Martinez Carbonell, president of the Historic Preservation Association of Coral Gables. Photos courtesy of Vicki Cerda.