Painted kitchen tiles

Edgar Miller
1939
Painted and glazed ceramic tile
L 30, W 30 cm

These original painted tiles by Edgar Miller were initially installed in the otherwise art-free, modernized galley kitchen created for Frank Furedy when he began renovations of the Glasner Studio in the late 1930s (with the bulk of the remodeling for the rest of the home being completed after World War II, in 1946). Decades later, when Bob Horn and his crew of artisans began to remodel the lower-level kitchen again in the 2000s, they knew right away that these pieces needed to be carefully preserved and re-embedded in some way in the new kitchen design. Now preserved in the new Miller-inspired kitchen by Horn, these tiles fit in comfortably, as if they were always meant to be there.

As with his lifelong love of painting on ceramic bowls and plates, Miller was equally as fond of painting and glazing on tile, which could then be embedded in clever and surprising ways throughout any interior space he was beautifying. In the kitchen, the two sets are made up of four square tiles each. One set depicts four forest animals including a bird, a weasel, a badger, and a mouse. In these tiles, Miller shows the incredible connection and love he had for animals of all kinds. He depicts these animals with movement and personality. The other tile set is interesting in that Miller makes use of all four tiles to create one unified image of a grazing antelope.

In these pieces, Miller employs his intricate, highly detailed and stylized design language derived from his study of numerous varieties of indigenous and folk arts from around the world.