timeless tiles

Meet Gretchen Kramp of Royal Oak, Michigan.  She crafts wonderful decorative tiles that are truly timeless.

Gretchen graduated from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in 1991 with a Bachelors of Fine Art majoring in painting and sculpture. At the time she was doing mixed media assemblages on wood, 3D paintings of sorts.

She didn’t really acquire an interest in clay until she was out of school and working for local ceramicist Marcia Hovland.  Through her, she was introduced to quite a few craftspeople making a living from their artwork and became more familiar with Pewabic Pottery, Detroit’s great local paradigm of Arts and Crafts style handmade tile.

Gretchen’s first tiles were just a batch of Christmas presents she made in December of 1994.   She was immediately hooked.

In addition to selling her tiles at gallery and art fairs, Gretchen has designed and created two amazing installations for the Detroit Zoo – The National Amphibian Conservation Center...

…and the Artic Ring of Life.

A portion of her artist statement reads, "Clay is a wonderful material that really lets an artist have her way with it!  Glazing, on the other hand is a difficult beast to tame. I mix my own glazes and it’s taken a lot of experimentation to figure out what works with my designs.

The best part of working in clay is opening up the kiln after firing a load of work. You never know exactly how things are going to look and it’s kind of like Christmas morning. (except once in a while I do get that lump of coal!)

The nice thing about being an artist is that I can incorporate any current interests I have into my work, whether it be entomology or motherhood, so I can’t imagine being bored. There are always new directions to explore and I’m are only limited by my imagination. (And budgets… And time….Ha!)"

I personally own over a dozen of Gretchen’s wonderful tiles.  I especially like her little 2×2 gems that I sprinkle all over the house – like above our his & hers bathrobe hooks…

…and our front door light switch and guest bathroom soap dish.

We carry a small selection of Gretchen’s work at our Berkley & Rochester locations as well as her firefly tile online.

You can see her full display of tiles at her holiday home show this December 7th, 8th & 9th Friday 6-9, Saturday 10-5, Sunday 12-4 at 608 W. Houstonia Ave the little, funky-brick house 2 streets North of 12 Mile Between Main & Crooks in Royal Oak.

For additional information, you can contact Gretchen at (248) 616-1090.