Concrete Detail Innovative Countertops
“It’s Not Your Papa’s Floor Anymore”
One of the things that interests me about countertops is the wide multitude of materials that can be used for them. I remember years ago when I was an Army cook in Berlin (OK, OK, decades ago-never mind how many!) and got a crash course in different countertop materials. I was transferred there from a post in West Germany, and I was appalled when I saw the steel countertops I would have to use. At that time I thought that the only acceptable countertop was a butcher block, but what I found was that I could get along just fine with a chopping block for the kind of things that needed to be done that way.
If you learn to cook by simply plopping down a head of lettuce on a countertop and going to work on it, having to switch over to a chopping block is something of a jolt. But, interestingly enough, from that day to this, that is how I have worked, excepting only the year or so I spent in restaurant kitchens. But for home use, it has always been a countertop made of material that necessitated the use of a chopping block of some sort for salads or cutting up meat for stews and the like. But once you get used to that sort of thing the actual material used for countertops can take on many dimensions.
In recent years one of the more innovative countertops has been concrete, which is a bit startling to an old codger like myself, but it is, as it turns out, a most plastic medium, in that it can be shaped, colored, and formed in an absolutely astonishing number of ways. I bring that up because I recently came across Concrete Detail, a New England-based company that specializes in countertops. What I find myself liking about their designs is the simplicity with which they have approached this ancient medium. The coolest thing about concrete these days is the many things that can be done with it, but that can be a seductive trap. The object, as I see it, is to design a countertop that is a focal point, without overpowering the kitchen.
Really, what should guide the design of the countertop of is the environment in which the finished product will sit. I bring that up because Concrete Detail has made countertops with that marvelous colored concrete and embedded glass, which is just a stunning concept. But they also know when to say when. Sometimes all a kitchen really needs is a simple countertop with a solid color to make a pleasing contrast with lighter-colored cabinets.
Another countertop I found myself particularly admiring was made with a soft gray/green they call “Sage.” They chose it because it complemented the existing cabinets, which had been handmade of cherry and had aged to that glorious patina that gives cherry its character-when you can keep it away from the Big Plant Manufacturers who insist on staining it to ensure “homogeneity,” thereby robbing it of all that makes cherry such a wondrous wood. To dress up this particular countertop, though, Concrete Detail used a series of back-painted, glass, mosaic tiles in a foursquare pattern that was embedded in three different locations. Each of the tiles they used was a different color, suggested by the slate backsplash tiles they used. It’s a design that is both simple and stunning.
I also like what they have done with an integrated farmhouse sink, which is pretty slick because you don’t often see a farmhouse sink that is integrated into the countertop, as opposed to a drop-in sink. And the splash of color they use from time to time in their designs is really just skilled artisans taking advantage of one of concrete’s primary advantages, which is that you can do anything you want to do with it.
My father worked in construction a lot as a young man, and really could have hired himself out as a general contractor, had he been so inclined. Back in the 1950s he made and installed a Formica countertop with a stainless steel double sink for our kitchen, not seeing, as indeed no one did then, other materials beneath his feet that could have been put to the same use. I remember watching him when he built out the basement in that house and expanded what was really just a crawl space to a complete, finished basement for our growing family. It had a bedroom, laundry room, and workshop for the Old Man. One of the thrills (hey, this was pre-almost-any-other-kind-of-entertainment days!) was when the concrete truck came to our house and they pumped concrete into the basement which my father then troweled himself. Whoever would have thought that same material would one day be used for absolutely glorious countertops?
Joseph
Novoceram Ceramic Tiles Imitating Wallpaper
“Not of this World”
My father was an absolute wizard with wallpaper. He never really went bonkers with it, but most of the houses he lived in had one wall that he decorated with wallpaper, so it became a design focal point, as opposed to simply blanketing a home with wallpaper. He sometimes confined it within wood borders, and always he seamed it perfectly. The other thing I found particularly formidable was the absolute ease with which he installed it. I first saw him wallpaper a wall in our Helena, Montana home in the 1950s, and although I was a small boy at the time, it was clear to me that the Old Man had done this many times before.
For my own self, I could never really get my arms around the idea of wallpaper, both because of the perceived difficulty of installing it-knowing I would inevitably want to work to the Old Man’s standards-and because of the difficulty of cleaning it, because face it, there comes a time when one cleans it or paints over it. Well now, by gosh, someone has come up with a new type of wallpaper altogether, one that avoids the problems of both installation and cleanup by the simple of expedient of being a product that looks like wallpaper but is, in fact, ceramic tile!
Novoceram is a French firm that has come up with one of the most innovative ideas I have ever seen in tile, and that’s saying a heck of a lot, because, as my constant readers know, tile is one of my dominant interests in life. And I say that, knowing full well that before I began writing these blogs and searching out interesting items on the Internet, tile was something I never really thought about at all. It was always the ceramic stuff one puts at the back of countertops for backsplashes-big whoop. Well, now, I gotta tell you, that perception has most definitely changed!
Novoceram went at this particular project in ways that just blow my mind. I won’t presume to speak for them, to say which came first, the method or the inspiration, but what they did was create a way to mimic the look and feel of wallpaper. What they specifically wanted to do was to reproduce the floral detail and silky softness of Eighteenth Century hand-painted Chinese wallpaper. If you explore their website, you will soon come across a poem written by a Chinese poet who lived from 701 to 762 A.D. Li Bai is renowned for his imagery, and we can certainly see why in the poem they quoted:
“When I wake up I open my eyes:
“A bird is singing amidst the flowers;
“I ask him at what point in the year we are.
“He answers: at the point where the breath of spring makes the birds sing.”
Inspired by that poem, Novoceram created the charm of the wallpaper that Eighteenth Century Chinese might have used to illustrate this scene, depicting branches, blooms and birds in a soft, almost other-worldly setting. The ceramic tiles they used for this are huge, as much as 53″ by 70″, and they have been laid out in such a way that it is actually possible to arrange them in a number of different patterns, allowing the end user to make a design all his own. It’s the sort of thing that one can use on a short wall, or as a focal panel in a larger wall, or even as a design that takes up an entire large wall, as it is possible to repeat the design across the wall, just as one would do with wallpaper. All these years later I still remember the green ivy on white bricks wallpaper that covered one wall in our Helena dining room. As a kid I spent hours examining the perfection of the Old Man’s seams.
The other thing about these tiles, as I said at the onset, is the fact that they look like what they are not, like wallpaper. Because it is such perfection, I have mostly used pictures of their Florilege line with the flowers and birds, but with European artisans, it always seems to be first a design, then endless variations on that design. Another design for the Novoceram’s wallpaper-like tile is Tresjouy, which is made with a thin gold liseret over a tile made to give the effect of the original canvas fabric that would have been used in this design by Eighteenth Century artisans. We show it here as backdrop to a pool; and with that amount of water and humidity, no one with a brain that works would want to use the wallpaper this tile so closely resembles.
It’s a product and a concept that can be used almost anywhere, and one so stunningly original that it really is difficult to talk about it without gushing. Perhaps the best way to sum up Novoceram’s accomplishment is to simply quote another poem from Li Bai:
“You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
“I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
“As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
“I have a world apart that is not among men.”
Joseph
Bontempi Italian Kitchen Designs
“The Power of Ideas”
Having researched and written these blogs for two years now, I am convinced that there is any number of absolutely perfect kitchen designs available, just not in my kitchen! But you know the kitchen design I’m talking about, right? For a long time our goal was that big dream kitchen. My wife and I both enjoy cooking, and the thought of having all that stuff and all that room and all those appliances, maybe even some kind of chimes ringing out “ah, sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found you,” whenever we entered the kitchen-it’s just such a glorious fantasy. And at some level, we would still like to do it. But the reality is that we are not willing to remodel our home to get enough room to do it, nor would we want to intrude into the adjacent family room which is where this childless couple spends the bulk of its time, watching movies on our large screen TV. For us, the smaller kitchen that is open to an active family room is just the ticket.
Actually, when I think about it for a moment we are on the cutting edge of kitchen design, in a sense, because more and more these days, people are looking to make of their kitchens a room where the family lives, the heart of the home, as opposed to a room where Mom cooks, apart from the home and all that concerns it. And when you think about it that way, devoting less space to the actual kitchen appliances carries with it a pureness of vision that has heretofore escaped us in our lust for all that is glorious and approved by the National Kitchen & Bath Association. But in saying that, I do not mean to say that the NKBA does not, in many respects, have the right idea in what they have put forward in their planning guidelines for kitchens. I personally found them most helpful in looking for a better way with my own kitchen remodeling plans, keeping in mind, of course, that it is not going to be possible for me to comply with a large part of what they have set forth as ideal, beginning with the much vaunted kitchen triangle.
A compact space, if it is laid out intelligently, would be just the ticket for us, and I suspect, a lot of other people, which brings us to Bontempi Cucine.
Like all Italian kitchen designers these days, Bontempi has any number of kitchen designs, all of them glorious, but I was particularly struck with their Omnia kitchen design, as it makes such an efficient use of the space. Those with the la-de-da kitchen designs will think this layout much too small, but all I need is a stove and sink and a small area for food preparation, because, truthfully, that’s pretty much all I’ve had anyway. Oh, we do have some counter space, but think it through a little. How much space do you really need for a chopping block; and that’s where you work, right? Throw some stuff in a pot; how much room do you need for that? Hell, my wife and I have made pumpkin pies together every Thanksgiving for as long as we’ve been married, the last seventeen or so in our current kitchen. She sits at one end of the counter to make the filling, and I roll out the pie crusts at the other end of the counter. And that is about as much space as we ever find ourselves needing.
And that brings us back to the Bontempi Omnia kitchen design. I’ve seen it described as “a distinctive, young-at-heart modern kitchen,” but maybe what it really is, is an idea whose time has come. And you know how powerful those are.
Joseph
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