The Puzzle

Imagine that you are trying to put together an old, incomplete puzzle. Also imagine that in the box there is really a few different puzzles mixed together and all of them are incomplete. Even though there are not enough pieces to finish one puzzle, there are enough to fill the space that one of the puzzles was supposed to occupy. Your job is to fit all of the pieces together so that they actually look like they were meant to go together.

This is sort of what I’ve been doing for the past few nights with the collection of salvage and new tiles that I bought to redo the fireplace hearths. It may sound like it is going to be an odd, jumbled mix of tiles, and I guess it will. In reality though, that pretty much describes what the original hearth tiles looked like in 1896. Most were damaged beyond repair, but what was left was made up of more than a half dozen different shapes and colors of tile.

There were 2-inch square, 4-inch square, triangle, 1X6 and 2X6 tiles. Some were incised with designs, others had portraits, and some were smooth. The colors covered the spectrum. The two fireplace hearths were easily made up of the most eclectic mix of tiles I’ve ever seen. It was almost like the tile installer used what ever was left over for the last 6 or 7 jobs, but it really worked. Even though they were beat to crap and with large sections missing, I just loved them. I would give my eye teeth if the hearths were still intact.

Sadly, they are not. So, I must do the next best thing, or at least the next best thing that I am capable of, given my budget and skill-set. Six or seven years ago, shortly after my ceiling fixture buying frenzy came to a close, I started scouring Ebay for deals on vintage tile. Here’s what I ended up with.


This is a 1.5X6 fireplace tile. This is salvage and originally from a surround. I have many whole tiles, but also a lot of half pieces from where they did a running bond up both sides of the firebox. I have another set in blue for the other hearth.


This is what I mean by a “running bond”. You’ll notice there is a whole tile, then 2 half, and then a whole. Like you would lay bricks.


A 6X6 tile. Also salvage. I bought 6 of them. I have different 6X6 for the other hearth.


A 1X8 tile. These are new, but I think this design would have been very popular with the Aesthetics movement. There are enough of these so I can use them on both hearths.


A 3X3 tile. These are salvage and I bought 2 of them. These may end up going on the other hearth.


A 3X8 tile. These are salvage and I think they are English. I have enough of these for both hearths.

So, now the trick is to fill the space with what I have. Below are the 3 different designs I’ve come up with. In all of these pictures, the tiles are set on the old, uneven mortar bed. I’ll smooth that out. Also, I will need to trim many of the tiles to fit. Just use your imagination a bit.


This was the first design. The two big problems here are that the tiles with the frogs and dragon fly’s does not go up the sides, and the green 1.5X6 tiles only have one row at the top. The design is not really balanced.


This design has a similar problem. I added in another 6X6 tile in hopes of gaining more of the 1.5X6 to use other places, but it still wasn’t enough for another row. I am very limited in the number of whole 1.5X6 tiles.


This is where I ended up. I have complete boarders of both the English and the dragon fly tile on the outside, and I have two rows of the 1.5X6 green tile above and below the 6X6 tile. The only problem here is that on the outside of the 6X6 row there are only half pieces of the 1.5X6 tiles. I don’t get a nice running bond, but I think it might be good enough.

I’ll continue to stare at it for the next few days and see how little this design bothers me.