Bellevue artisans expand on a household art

But, lest fear run rampant, it is important to note it also is the birthplace of innocent numeral markers for homes as well as hearth designs inspired by stained glass.

"Places like this are a hidden treasure," Bernie Reilly says about Red Clay Tile Works. The Oakmont man is a client of the business. "As consumers, we have gotten lazy. We are willing just to take whatever is on the shelf."

The shop, run by Anders and Eileen Anderson, produces simple items such as trivets and the number signs. But Andy, as he is known, and Eileen seem to take the most pride in their efforts to keep alive a household art form they find little used in this country.

They say many people don't think of tile for a wide range of homes or products.

"We like to be able to hear an idea and then help people find a way to do it," he says.

They have a work outlook that blends the artistic with the functional. That shows in the shop. The front of the store is largely a display area, with samples and catalogs. The rear is a workshop with ovens, cooling areas and racks for projects nearing completion.

"He has an artistic sensibility to know what to do and the industrial sense to get it done," says Terry Rorison, also of Bellevue, who as a terra-cotta architecture specialist led Anderson to creating gargoyles for a building in Vancouver.

Piecing together a career

Although tile creations now are their business, the shop once also produced iron work, Andy's specialty.

But he says the creations Eileen was producing came to dominate his "labor-intensive" craft. After moving to Bellevue in 1977 from their first shop, in Shaler, they started concentrating on tile.

Eileen says tile has been her fascination since the couple met in the early '70s as students at the School of Arts and Design at the University of Cincinnati. Born in Detroit, Andy grew up in Franklin Park. Eileen came from the Philadelphia area.

"Most people who get into ceramics get into pottery," she says with a look that blends disgust and humor. "And I don't like clutter. I hate things sitting around."

She saw, however, how tile was very popular in the United States and headed to Europe after graduating.

"I loaded up my backpack and went to Spain and elsewhere in Europe where it's easy to find," she says.

It also is more popular in the U.S. Southwest because of the Spanish influence, she says, but in this area it tends to be rare. She says the Moravian Pottery & Tile Works in Doylestown, Bucks County, is one of the few places in the East where such work can be explored.

Vance Koehler, curator of the tile works at Moravian Pottery, agrees the craft is "overlooked."

He says tile is prevalent in the Southwest and many new homes in California are using it as a design element.

"It is not as utilized as it could be," he says. "In this area, everybody thinks stone for a lot of the spots where tile could be used."

The Spanish influence doesn't play a big role this area, Andy says. Much of their work here centers on taking cues from Victorian design in older homes or borrowing hints from stained-glass windows.

The hearth surround in the Reilly house, for example, copies a pattern in a front window, the Andersons and the homeowner say.

But Andy says tile can be crafted in any style; he feels comfortable working in contemporary designs as well older ones.

He takes his art in many directions. In the manufacturing area in the back of the Bellevue shop, he currently is working on a tile representation of a photograph of a wooded hillside.

"It looks exactly like that picture," Rorison says. "It looks like Tuscany."

The Andersons try to put together a job that can be finished easily. They don't do installations, leaving that up to the homeowner or a contractor.

Ron Wasilak from Murrysville had no trouble when he installed a treatment on his hearth.

Anderson created a surround for Wasilak's fireplace without going to the house. He worked purely on Wasilak's ideas and measurements and photos of the hearth.

"At one point, I drove over to the shop and checked on what he had come up with," he says. "And that was it."

"I gave him the general idea," Wasilak says, "and when it was done, I took all the pieces out of the box and they fit perfectly."

A knowledge of Spanish design allowed the Andersons to create tile work for a new home in Florida. Andy did the physical design without ever leaving the shop, working simply on measurements and photography.

Jane France and Chris Allison from Ben Avon keep the Andersons in mind for all of their household efforts.

"We look around the house seeing what we can do and say, 'OK, how can we use them next?' " France says. They live in a house built in 1908, and have had the Andersons do surrounds for two of their seven fireplaces. They also had a backsplash created for the kitchen.

Jane France talks with near amazement at how fast these creations came about, estimating the projects took four to six weeks from conception to execution.

Reilly, too, is thrilled by the way Anderson "gets interested in what he's doing" and becomes dedicated to the creation.

Reilly had the Andersons create an outdoor mural at the front door. He had seen some of their work at a crafts show and thought they could carry off his idea.

The Andersons often take their work to shows, such as the Duquesne Light Home & Garden Show at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. The show opened Friday and runs through March 18.

"We are really pleased with the way things came out," Reilly say. "And the tile-setter was very happy, too. The pieces were numbered and that made it really easy."

A beastly creation

A familiarity with the Andersons' work also led Rorison to them on the gargoyle project. He now is a software salesman, but in 1989, he was doing architectural terra-cotta work and was hired for a 23-story building in Vancouver.

The owner and developer decided he wanted gargoyles to peer down at a building across the street. Rorison decided to go to Anderson.

"I knew he could do it and do it quickly," he says.

He says Anderson was able to draw up the plans in about a day and a half, and came up with one remarkably fitting detail.

Anderson says he used a model of a gargoyle Rorison found at the Grand Concourse on the South Side. But Anderson came up with a way of making the figures more appropriate for the owner, who is Asian.

"We gave them a Buddha belly," Anderson says with a laugh about the round torso on the creatures, which came out about 5 1/2-feet high.

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