Crossroads News
Ceramics Teacher Re-Creates Tile for Union Station
Crossroads ceramics teacher and his wife have been contracted to recreate decades-old art deco tile for downtown LA’s Union Station.
Crossroads ceramics teacher Rich Mudge, along with his wife and fellow ceramicist Joanne Horton, have been contracted to recreate decades-old art deco tile for more than 100 square feet in downtown LA’s Union Station.
Rich and Joanne were given the job because they’re among only a handful of ceramicists in the LA area who have knowledge of glaze chemistry and glaze calculation. “It’s kind of a dying art,” Rich says. “It’s still being researched, but more from an industrial standpoint. If you went into ceramics engineering, you would learn it, but not when you’re studying ceramics as an art form.”
To make new tile precisely match historic tile that is 80 to 100 years old, Rich and Joanne will use glaze chemistry to recalculate what might have been an original formula to match the age of the tile as well as the color. Typically, more than 70 glaze tests are required before the color and age of the old and new tiles match.
According to Rich, the process is the perfect combination of art and science. “The glazes have a lot of earth minerals that are weighed and measured precisely to yield a precise outcome,” he says. “When you’re reformulating glaze from scratch, it’s mostly algebra.”
The project will take Rich and Joanne four to six weeks to complete. Once it’s finished, they will be able to add Union Station to the list of California landmarks that they have helped to restore, including the Glenarm Steam Plant Building in Pasadena, Santa Monica City Hall and the Millennium Biltmore Hotel.
