Flamingo Tile Panel — Mosaic Tile Company, Zanesville, Ohio, c. 1949

Description

This pictorial tile mural by the Mosaic Tile Company of Zanesville, Ohio depicts four flamingos in a lush tropical waterscape. Two flamingos dominate the center of the composition, their wings spread wide as they lift from the water. To the right, a third flamingo stands in elegant profile, its slender neck curved in a characteristic S-shape. At the lower left, a fourth bird feeds, its head dipped below the waterline.

The scene is framed by tropical foliage — palm fronds sweep in from the upper corners, and dense marsh grasses anchor the lower edge. A driftwood branch curves along the bottom left. In the background, a teal-green waterline stretches to a distant shore beneath a sky of soft blue clouds.

The color palette is striking: warm pink and salmon for the flamingo bodies, deep black for the wing tips and tail feathers, teal and forest green for the vegetation and water, and a clean cream-white for the open sky and foreground.

How These Panels Were Made

Pictorial tile panels like this one were entirely hand-decorated at the Mosaic Tile factory. Factory artists worked from full-size cartoons — detailed drawings the same dimensions as the finished panel — as reference while painting each individual tile. Because every tile was drawn by hand, each panel produced was unique, with subtle variations in brushwork and expression from one example to the next. These pictorial panels were originally marketed to complement and accent the plain field tiles that Mosaic sold in volume, and were generally installed on the back wall of a shower or bathtub surround, or around a swimming pool.

This mural is offered with a set of the original red field tiles that accompanied the panel — the tiles it was designed to be installed alongside.

Conservation

This panel has undergone three weeks of careful hand conservation to remove old mastic adhesive from the tile backs. The tiles are now clean and ready for installation or display.

About the Mosaic Tile Company

The Mosaic Tile Company was established in Zanesville, Ohio in 1894. Over the following decades, it grew into one of the largest tile manufacturers in the United States, employing hundreds of workers at its peak. The company produced everything from utilitarian floor tiles to ambitious decorative panels like this one. Zanesville itself was home to an extraordinary concentration of ceramic manufacturers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — including the American Encaustic Tiling Company, J.B. Owens, Roseville, and Weller — earning it the nickname “Clay City.”

Pictorial tile murals of this scale and complexity represent the upper end of what American tile manufacturers attempted. Each tile had to be individually painted and fired while maintaining color consistency and alignment across the full panel. Complete surviving examples are rare — most were damaged during architectural demolitions or broken up over time.

Display & Installation

This mural would make a dramatic statement installed in a bathroom, kitchen, pool house, or as a standalone wall piece. It carries the visual impact of a painting with the permanence and material richness of ceramic.

Free shipping included. Local pickup also available in the Cincinnati, Ohio area.