After a twenty-year career as an artist working with mosaics, Erin Adams is lending her playful eye for color and pattern to tile manufacturer New Ravenna Mosaics. Her new collection of twelve designs pays homage to artists that have inspired her. In fact, Adams named opaque hues in her collection—new additions to New Ravenna’s jewel glass colors—after twentieth-century icons: Aalto, Girard, Knoll, Ponti, Zeisel and Eames.

Erin Adams Cityscape. Designed by Erin Adams. Manufactured by New Ravenna Mosaics.

Modern Mosaics with Graphic and Folk Inspirations

The Erin Adams Collection plays with diverse inspirations—everything from mid-century mod graphics to African kente cloth. The result is a whimsical and upbeat series of tile mosaics that can be used for interior vertical installations. “I wanted to create a happy and refreshing collection,” explains Adams. Thanks to her personal color vocabulary, which includes bright oranges, blues, reds, and greens, the Erin Adams Collection achieves the artist’s desired sense of rapture.

But Adams also wanted to experiment with pure white mosaics in order to use contrasting grout as a design element. The collection also includes studies in black and white, including the powerful Mod Drops, a cartoony interpretation of water splashes. Other patterns include Smalti, a reproduction of the Italian stained glass technique executed “in a riot of colors.” Organic elements in the Erin Adams Collection—flowers, coral, clouds, and fish—become dynamic expressions: “Pop plays significantly in her treatment of objects from the natural world.”

Forks Knives Spoons in orange and tangerine presents a spirited tableau for kitchen backsplashes, putting me in mind of the personified cutlery in the Mother Goose nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle. Bottles is perfect for wine cellars, bars, or dining rooms: here the mosaic fracturing reminds me of a Braque still life. Aside from the mosaic tiles, the Erin Adams Collection includes patterns in stone that can be installed on floors and walls both indoors and outdoors.

Via Appliancist.

About the Manufacturer: New Ravenna Mosaics designs and manufactures stone and glass mosaic tiles in their Virginia facility. The company designs for both residential and commercial clients. New Ravenna Mosaics are handcrafted into decorative borders, murals, fields, and medallions; they can be tumbled, honed, or treated. The resulting work is one-of-a-kind: “The end products are custom works of art in mosaic tile.”