Reclaimed Tiles

To build the reclaimed tile wine rack, I first needed to reclaim some tiles. This picture was taken shortly after I cut them all down to be six inches wide.


All in all, they were in remarkably good condition, which is a testament to how durable terracotta roof tiles are. A few were chipped; a few were cracked, but by and large once I trimmed them down using a diamond blade on a wet tile saw, they were in great shape to become part of the wine rack. They did all take a good power-washing to spruce them up a bit though.

Freshly cut tile

Once I cut them down, they ended up looking like this. I drilled those two holes to help me attach them to the wine rack, so those aren't original to to the tile.

These were put on Josh's roof many years ago. They're stamped with a few logos, one of which says "Pat'd. Apr. 8th 1924;" so they have to have been put on some time after that.

Pretty cool that you can see the date, 1924, on the tile

I looked them up, and Ludowici-Celadon Co. is still selling tile today. I guess it was a pretty solid company.

Another neat detail is the cross design that's stamped on the tiles (sometimes twice on each tile):

Also, the logo, still visible after 90ish years

When all was said and done, there's an awful lot of history and character in these tiles. I like to think that I did a decent job reclaiming them and incorporating them into the piece in a unique way that did justice to that history. Make sure you check out the way the wine rack looks too.