The Detroit News | Friday, July 16, 2010 | Cover Story
Motawi Magic
Artisan tile maker in Ann Arbor gets nationwide acclaim
By Susan R. Pollack | Detroit News Design Writer
Don't be fooled by all those Band-Aids sprouting from the fingers of Kerry Coker and Bud Helm, who work as edgers at Motawi Tileworks in Ann Arbor.
It's not that the men are injury-prone. Rather, Band-Aids are the tools of their trade; they use them to painstakingly smooth the edges of hundreds of decorative tiles each week at the small studio-factory that's making a national name for its handcrafted tiles inspired by the early 20th-century Arts and Crafts movement.
"We order Band-Aids by the case from Rite Aid - we go through tons of them," says Nawal Motawi, who founded the business 18 years ago in her Ann Arbor garage after working four "formative" years at the historic Pewabic Pottery in Detroit.
Beautiful and functional with stylized motifs drawn from art and nature, Motawi tiles today are represented in 60 showrooms nationwide and in nearly 400 gift shops, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian and the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The shops carry clocks with tile insets and decorative art tiles in an array of sizes, framed in wide, quarter-sawn white oak.
Admirers collect Motawi as individual art pieces - starting at $35 for unframed, 4- by 4-inch squares - or install them in everything from kitchen backsplashes, fireplace surrounds, bathrooms and floors to public murals in places such as University Hospital in Ann Arbor and Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
Motawi is known for its raised-line, multicolored tiles called polychrome, featuring a color palette of 32 glazes, mostly matte. The studio also makes single-glaze relief tiles that have a sculptural quality, as well as hand-dipped field or plain tiles that don't require hand-edging - or Band-Aids.
Three years ago, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation named Motawi the exclusive licensee to re-create Wright designs in tile, a thrilling development that gave Nawal and her staff access to untapped archives.
Motawi also incorporates designs, such as celtic knots and terra-cotta medallions, from renowned Chicago architect Louis Sullivan and from the prints of artist Yoshiko Yamamoto.
Visitors who attend free, one-hour tours offered at 11 a.m. every Thursday get an eye-opening lesson in ceramic tile-making in a shop where the emphasis truly is on handcraftsmanship.
Motawi artisans make their own molds - there are about 500 in the studio's portfolio - and every tile is fired twice.
The staff of 25 is encouraged to refine tile-making equipment and processes. Thus Band-Aids aren't the only funky, drugstore-type "tools" that go into the meticulous, 12-step process that transforms raw clay, purchased in 25-pound boxes from Roven Ceramics in Taylor, to beautiful, finished tiles.
Artisans skilled in painting, jewelry-making and cake-decorating use blue plastic bulb syringes - the kind familiar to any parent - to bulb-glaze the tiles.
Motawi, a University of Michigan art school grad, took time out from her duties as principal designer and finance chief to answer Homestyle questions:
Q. What's your most popular tile?
A. This year, the popular gift tile is "Skylight," a 4- by 8-inch tile design (adapted) from Frank Lloyd Wright's home and studio. It's in olives and browns, very earthy. The design is so strong and the colors are so current it just grabs people - they've taken to it like crazy.
Bugs are huge, too, along with ravens, redwoods and, this week, the gold salmon sunflower.
And we've been making the "Pine Landscape" series since 1996, in a variety of different sizes and motifs. We also helped students at Farmington High School make a big one, approximately 8 by 8 feet, for the school lobby.
Q. Do you ever have sales?
A. We have tile sale extravaganzas the first Saturday in June and in December. It's an event with demonstrations and tours. Our first-quality pieces are marked down 25 percent. We typically have 150 people in line, raring to go.
We don't really have many seconds. They get scooped up during our open hours during the year. Savvy shoppers know to come out on a Wednesday - every Tuesday we weigh and count our defects and they're on the sales floor by 10 a.m. Wednesday morning.
The seconds we do have (base, crown moldings, decorative and border trims, etc.) sell for $6 per pound. Discounted art tiles start around $9 and are not always seconds, sometimes just discontinued or leftovers.
Q. Is there a signature color?
A. We definitely have a flagship glaze - Lee Green, No. 5002. It's a warm, satiny matte, a forest green that breaks brown on the edges. I've been using it since day one. There's also my titanium matte glaze, Granite, a mixed, mottled grayish-brownish glaze with a lot of variations.
Q. What's new on the horizon?
A. We're releasing a line of slip-cast vases in three different styles in September. We have some prototypes in our shop now.
Motawi Tileworks
What: Motawi Tileworks is an art tile studio specializing in Cuenca-style polychrome tile, molded relief tile and field tile for installation.
Where: 170 Enterprise Drive, Ann Arbor; about 1 mile off I-94, near Jackson Road, on the city's west side.
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.
Studio tours: Free, hour-long tours are offered at 11 a.m., every Thursday. Two additional tours will be conducted next week, at 11 a.m. Wednesday and Friday to coincide with the Ann Arbor Art Fair.
Play with clay: From 5 to 9 p.m. Monday, during Ann Arbor's Townie Street Party, Motawi is offering a free "Make-a-Tile" experience for up 500 participants. For $5, the studio will glaze and fire your finished tile and have it ready for pick-up by late August. The event will be held on the pedestrian-friendly Ingalls Mall.
Etc.: Motawi will showcase its latest pieces in an art fair booth at the corner of East and South University streets.
Information: www.motawi.com, (734) 213-0017.
The Detroit News, Friday, July 16, 2010