Olive Hill Joins Motawi Tileworks’ Frank Lloyd Wright Collection

Olive Hill is the latest ceramic tile design to join the Frank Lloyd Wright Collection at Motawi Tileworks. A 6-by-6-inch relief tile available in Emerald and Moonstone colorways, Olive Hill ($54) can be purchased online at motawi.com and in the Motawi gallery (170 Enterprise Drive in Ann Arbor).

Motawi has also introduced Olive Hill for Installation, a 6-by-6-inch border tile available in 36 glaze colors for $54 per piece. Olive Hill for Installation features A and B pieces that align to create the continuous pattern Frank Lloyd Wright envisioned. Installation tile orders can be placed through Motawi’s design department: installationdesign@motawi.com.

Motawi Tileworks has been licensed to produce tiles based on Frank Lloyd Wright’s work for more than a decade. The Olive Hill design is based on one of Wright's textile block concepts for the “Little Dipper” Community Playhouse, a school planned for heiress Aline Barnsdall's extensive property atop Olive Hill in Los Angeles. While the “Little Dipper” and many of the other buildings planned for Olive Hill were never constructed, the site is home to Barnsdall Art Park and the Wright-designed Hollyhock House.

“Over the years, we’ve built an extensive line of tiles that reimagine Frank Lloyd Wright’s works — both the iconic and the lesser-known,” said Nawal Motawi, owner and artistic director of The Tileworks. “I love working with Wright’s textile block patterns, and Olive Hill was an opportunity to bring new life to a design that was not fully realized in its time.”

Founded in 1992, Motawi Tileworks makes handcrafted tile as art pieces and for residential and commercial installations. Motawi tiles are suitable for installation, framing and hanging.