Description

Antique American Encaustic Tiling Co. Slim-Tile Fireplace Surround in Soft Sage — Complete & Marked AETCo

This is a complete antique fireplace surround in slim-format tile by the American Encaustic Tiling Company of Zanesville, Ohio — one of the most important names in American tile, and by 1890 the largest tile manufacturer in the world. The tiles carry the AETCo maker’s mark on the reverse.

American Encaustic was founded in 1875 to take on the expensive English imports that dominated American fireplaces at the time. Their Zanesville works grew so large it nearly tripled the size of the town, and AETCo tile found its way into homes, hotels, and public buildings across the country. A surviving complete surround from this maker, still in installable condition, is the form collectors and restoration designers actually want — and the hardest to find.

The color is a soft, mottled sage green warming into cream, with the soft, even crazing native to a glaze of this age. The tiles are the slim, linear format: roughly 102 of the 1 x 6 inch length and about 66 of the 1 x 3 inch, around 168 tiles total. Laid up in the stacked, vertical pattern they were made for, they frame an open firebox with a clean, almost modern rhythm.

This complete set is clean, complete, and ready to install — a full, matched, installable surround in a wantable color. The glaze shows the soft overall crazing you expect from a period surface — original to the tile, not damage.

Uses: a working or decorative firebox surround, a powder-room or bath feature wall, a kitchen range backsplash, a vestibule or entry accent, or framed as architectural art.