[gentle acoustic guitar music]
- I started Motawi Tileworks in my garage on Packard Road
in Ann Arbor 23 years ago.
But I realized only about four years ago,
15 years into the journey, that this was my calling.
I don't think you should have to go to a museum
to see beautiful things.
It's actually really important to me
that you can have beautiful things in your everyday life.
[soothing music]
I started working at Pewabic Pottery
because that's what you did
when you graduated in the ceramics in southeast Michigan.
At Pewabic, I learned how to make relief tile.
Relief tile is all about the sculpture
and the form of the tile.
It's low relief, and the glaze just melts over it.
And after I had seen a lot of other American art tile
from the 20th century,
I realized there were some more techniques out there
that I really wanted to look at.
And I really wanted to be able to use color.
Motawi's art tile is a tile
that's made with the raised line technique.
I'll have a little tiny ridge
about 35 thousandths of an inch tall.
And essentially, they're all these little bathtubs
into which you pool the glaze.
It's really a signature look for us.
It really separates us from Pewabic or anyone else.
I get to play with color! [laughing]
- Yoshiko Yamamoto: Motawi tiles.
I love their tile.
They are so simple and elegant and yet very strong.
So working with Motawi,
they take my more traditional kind of work
and make it more contemporary.
- I knew those designs would make great tile,
but, you know, there's some feelings in painting
and woodblock that you cannot capture.
So my curious talent is to take designs and motifs
that I see and envision them in Motawi's design style.
- So the first step is that we get art from Yoshiko
and then I go in and actually trace out the tile.
Now the trick here is that
we have to have a certain size area
for glaze to be able to go into.
And there are things in this art that can't accommodate that.
So what I do is I make decisions about what stays and what goes.
I try to keep the spirit of the art as much as possible.
We end up with a nice set of line art
that represents all the lines
that are gonna be the raised lines
in all the tiles that we do.
- And then we bring it into another program called ArtCAM.
And this allows us to create the actual
three-dimensional object.
Traditionally, molds were made by engraving with a sharp tool
into a block of plaster.
That would be very hard to accomplish
this much complexity and detail in plaster.
Once we've created the tool path in ArtCAM,
we bring it right over here to a separate computer
and our CNC router.
First, we carve the radius of our tile
as a cavity in this wax, which I've already done.
And then we switch to a smaller bit
and we engrave our lines.
[machine whirring]
CNC stands for Computer Numerical Control.
We can achieve things like circles
and really small geometry.
- After they cut out the wax on the CNC machine,
I'll fill it with rubber to make it a positive
rather than a negative.
So after I pour the rubber,
I'll pour plaster over it to make a mold.
Once I make the mold,
then I'll take it to the ram press.
With the ram process, I can release it within seconds.
- You know, what's the difference
between a good craftsman and a really great process
performed by a bunch of people who are disciplined
in adhering to the process?
I would argue that a craftsman
is someone who remembered how to do it every time
and sticks to their process.
Well, that's what we do at Motawi.
[soothing piano music]
- Bulb glazing is the method we use to apply the glaze
to the surface of the ceramic tile.
It's pooling the glaze
in between very shallow, raised lines.
So this is gonna be our holiday tile.
You just apply gentle pressure, and there's different-size tips
to control the flow of the glaze.
- One of the things I'm looking at in the cardinal tile
is where do I want to take that background?
Is it a warm tone winter sky?
Is it a cool, cold-feeling sky?
Is it a deep blue day?
What's gonna make the cardinal sing?
The finesse on that one is going to come
from getting the shade of blue just right.
[gentle violin music]
We're making a certain kind of tile,
and we feel that we can make the world a better place
with our beautiful things.
You know, feeling that sense of beauty,
it's an important thing for people.
It just elevates your being.
[soothing music]