Handmade Tile

What a thrill for me to be featured on the Bailey Pottery website! I have been using a Bailey slab roller for years and years and so I was delighted when I when they asked me to be part of their "Made with a Bailey" spotlight. You can read the whole interview here: https://www.baileypottery.com/blog/post/made-with-a-bailey-interview-featuring-emily-margaret-ulm.html This is NOT a paid or sponsored post!

Oh, how I love installation pictures! And they are even more fun when they include process photos. This customer got her tiles from River Light Gallery in nearby Peninsula and installed them in her former coach house which she calls "Skyloft." It is a fitting name given those skylights! Looks pretty dreamy to me. Here are the tiles going up: A praying mantis, honeybee, caterpillar and dragonfly each make an appearance in this cheery arrangement.  As you can see, she planned the layout at the gallery before taking them home: Thank you so much, F.R., for including my tiles in...

Sometimes new designs don't make it on the to website right away. For example, I created this new, 2x2 inch crow tile last fall and it is only now available through my online store.  What can I say? Often I am so busy making tiles that I have a hard time finding the time to write about it. The black and white color combination in the picture above is new and there is an upcharge for it because it is more labor intensive than my normal glazing process. No extra charge for any of my standard glazes.  Crows are my...

Normally plants and animals are the inspirations for my tiles, but recently a client requested that I come up with some new geometric designs in the 2x2 and 3x3 inch sizes, so I sculpted some out of plasticine clay, which I then made molds of. Here is a picture of the sculpting process: Once a mold has been made, I can replicate the designs hundreds of times or more. This customer wanted their set of tile to be glazed in white, but these tiles could be glazed in any color. Not every design in this collection is completely new.  The "geometric...

It is always an honor when a fellow artist chooses my work for their home! Minneapolis painter Sarah Johannsen and I did a partial trade in which she painted a portrait of me and my husband, Darrell, and I made tiles to go behind the range in her kitchen. She selected multiples of the quatrefoil four tile set in honey glaze to harmonize with her sweet vintage home. I love how the tiles look with that retro, yellow floral curtain! Sarah installed the tiles herself and said it turned out exactly how she pictured it beforehand, which is a good thing.  Here...

I can "bear-ly" contain my excitement over these pictures!!! So thrilled to see what over 150 bear tiles look like installed together in this kitchen. It is a lot of bears, for sure, but the fact that they are all glazed in white keeps them from overwhelming the space. The overall feel is "calm" rather than "busy."  The bears combined with the knotty cabinets give the room a "cabin in the woods" vibe which I find very appealing.  From a distance, you might miss the bears! But you can't miss the fact that this room looks like a welcoming and comfortable...

These fun installation pictures are from California. The original stone and brick hearth had some large, square holes in it that were left over from the blower for an old cast iron wood burning fireplace. The homeowners could have torn out the whole hearth and started over from scratch, but instead they decided to make the most of what they already had and turn the cutouts into focal points by filling them with art tiles in designs that have special significance for their family. They replaced the wood burner with a modern electric fireplace made by Dimplex, which looks pretty convincing...

This lovely kitchen is right here in beautiful Kent, Ohio, just around the corner from the elementary school where I first experienced the joy of ceramics!  I realize how lucky I am; not everyone gets to try ceramics in grade school. Thinking about this fact makes me realize that my community began supporting me long before I decided to become a professional artist. This is part of the reason I always vote "yes" for school levies, even though I don't have children of my own.  Most of the tiles I make ship out of state, but I have definitely been...