Larisa Harper - The Mosaic Tile Company: History and Products, 1894-1967

Mom, I think you have a problem. I struggled to understand what I had heard my daughter say. An addiction, she added. Her words were familiar to me, but I could not comprehend entirely. We had been wandering around an antique store on the hunt for treasures. She went for the final emphasis. You have too many tiles. Wait, what?

I slowly lowered the dusty tile I was holding to a sales shelf. I had just found it on the floor of the vendors booth. I had already checked the back of the tile and had found the recognizable logo of the Mosaic Tile Companya raised elongated horizontal racetrack-shaped oval with the capital letters, MOSAIC, within. These items had been made by turn of the 20th century Zanesville citizensbeloved grandparents and parents of the people I have met in antique stores, museums, and on social media pagespeople who love the history of the company and the area.

I did not see my collection of tiles as a problem. To me, it was an act of protection. My quest to protect these Mosaic tiles had been instilled in me because my parents, my eight siblings, and I lived in a house near Zanesville, Ohio, which had been decorated with thousands of tiles. I am not exaggeratingthousands! Several of the walls, ceilings, and floors were covered with monochromatic color schemes of blue, green, brown, yellow, red, and golden tiles. Instead of wallpaper and paint, someone had used the tiles for the interior design.

While growing up, the tiles were normal dcor to me. These were just part of the house; I barely noticed them until the occasional tile fell to the floor. I do not remember exactly when Mom shared the story with me. The story made these tiles more personal to me. The story brought a big world down to a small size.

The characters of the story were a real-life family in 1950, Otto and Margaret Kauffman and their children, Karin (15 years old), Kristin (13), Otto IV (11) and Ulrich (7), who had moved to Zanesville after a harrowing escape from eastern Germany after World War II. After emigrating to the U.S., Otto landed a job at the Mosaic Tile Company as the ceramic engineer. They bought a home about five miles south of the companys headquarters. This real estate bounty was a three-story house with a full basement; it had once been a farms barn. Over a five-year period, Otto spent time with his family decorating the home with Mosaics tiles in multiple colors and shapes.

The story transitioned in 1956 when the Kauffmann family moved again for a new employment opportunity in Canada. Along came the Higdon family: Richard, father; Janette, mother; and their four children, David (7 years old), Pamela (5 years old), Michele (2 years old), Janine (1 years old), and a fifth child, Rick, was on his way. My parents raised a total of nine children in that house (including Barbara, Julie, Todd, and Larisa) and, over the decades, memories have intertwined with the tiles even as the structure of the home began to need repairs. In present day, my husband and I have been working to restore the home and its tiles.

My appreciation for the Mosaic Tile Company began as a child surrounded by the tile and now as an adult as a collector, protector, and chronicler of the history and the products of the company. I do not claim to have expertise in the field of ceramics or art pottery. My passion is simply to tell the story of this company in order to fill a gap in the anthology of the ceramics industry. Many details about the history of the industry, the production of tiles and ceramic figures, and the science associated with the creation of these pieces are gleaned from attributed resources. There are likely many products from the Mosaic Tile Company that are not included in this book because of lack of trademarking or because they were not discovered by me during my research. What we learn from this point onward may warrant another book to include the new treasures along with the stories associated with the families of this company.