Craftsman Arched Fireplace
Craftsman Arched Fireplace
Making a new old fireplace surround.
When you walk in the front door of Rob Davis and Richard Lundgren’s 1926 Arts & Crafts Tudor Revival home, you can’t help but notice the fireplace.
They bought the historic home in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, in 2022, to go with their other Arts & Crafts home in Stockton, California.
The first exposure Rob, a retired pediatrician, and Richard, a retired minister, had to the Motawi brand was several years ago in a shop in Saugatuck, Michigan. The colors and design of the Motawi art tiles on display there were tasteful, understated, and impossible to ignore.
So when it came time to figure out their own fireplace project, they thought of Motawi. After reviewing countless websites, home trade journals, Pinterest boards and, of course, tile makers, it was the many great home projects designed by and featuring products from Motawi Tileworks they knew who’d they’d work with. “Motawi had the artisanship and craftsmanship an Arts & Crafts home requires,” said Rob.
Motawi’s senior designer Morrin McGunagle oversaw the entire project from the very beginning. “Morrin really helped us get a better idea of what would be involved,” Rob said. “We had our own ideas, but her ideas were better. She knew exactly what kind of fireplace surround we needed.”
Rob & Richard in front of their fireplace
It’s only natural.
Rob and Richard are drawn to natural colors – sages, greens and browns – which are found in a lot of Arts & Crafts homes. “We sent Morrin a bunch of pictures of the fireplace, and of different rooms in our house,” Rob said. “We told her how we were going to paint the living room. We didn’t want anything too flashy, but more quiet and tasteful. Morrin gave us a lot of options for tile and glaze color. We ordered a bunch of samples and narrowed our tile choices down to two.”
“We landed on lichen for the primary color,” Morrin said, “and burnt sienna for the complementary. The relief tiles are from our Sullivanesque line, which Rob and Richard really liked.”
Motawi’s Sullivanesque tiles are based on the work of architect Louis Sullivan (1856-1924), who designed hundreds of buildings and homes in and around Chicago, including in Aurora, where Rob and Richard’s home was located. After considering both the Archer and Halsted decorative tiles, they chose Halsted.
A dark grout would fill the space between tiles so as not to upstage the tile colors.
Grading on a curve.
The fireplace’s distinguishing feature, its arched top, presented a challenge for Morrin and her team. “The arch’s original brickwork wasn’t balanced,” Morrin said, “so we worked with their tile installer, Mitch Trilling, who helped troubleshoot. He adjusted the arch until it was symmetrical.”
“When we design installations for custom arches,” Morrin said, “we draw the tile layout by hand at full scale and create a template of the existing arch to ensure that the finished tiles will fit perfectly. Clay shrinks when it’s fired, so we increase the size of our templates before we can cut the tiles out of wet clay. The tile installer sends us a physical template of the arch opening, which they trace on cardstock.”
“It takes an entire day to make the hand-drawn templates, but it’s worth it.”
Other than a couple tiles breaking during the shipping process, Motawi’s Craftsman Arched Fireplace installation in Rob and Richard’s home was problem-free.
“From my very first call to Motawi to the end of the installation,” said Rob, “the entire process took about nine months. Every second was worth it.”
“We couldn’t be happier with the result.”
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