🎧 Every Tile Tells a Tale: The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works Andrew Buck, Ed.D.

Appears in the November 2024 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

The audio file for this article was produced by the Ceramic Arts Network staff and not read by the author.

Tile is ubiquitous. In every continent, and within most cultures, tile work occupies a space of durable presence. The humble tile serves to protect floors, waterproof bathrooms and kitchens, provide thermal barrier protection around stoves, elevate houses of worship, and commemorate or memorialize historical, mythical, and religious events. Tiles can be innocuous and anonymous or strikingly personal, beautiful, and meaningful. Framing these spaces of functionality and purpose lies a rich history that informs and motivates current tile production. 

In this article, we explore past and present impulses that serve to preserve and perpetuate the story and practice of tile making at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. 

The Past is Present 

The recent COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 hit the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works particularly hard. County officials were seriously considering closing the site down and repurposing the building and grounds for other community needs. This points to an anomaly. The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is presently owned by Bucks County, which acquired the land and facilities in 1968. In 1985, it was designated a National Historic Landmark. However, as a “working history museum,” it is now managed and operated by the Tileworks of Bucks County, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. Most readers are accustomed to a post-WWII culture where Western art focuses on individuals. Stories or articles in the field of clay focus on individual ceramic artists or the “studio potter.” In contrast, this story is about an institution that is very much driven by people, places, and things. After 100 years, Moravian Pottery and Tile Works remains a place to visit, enjoy, learn about, and purchase architectural quarry tiles, decorative tiles, mosaic picture tiles, and high-relief or brocade art tiles in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. 

The Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, built between 1911 and 1912, was the brainchild of Henry Chapman Mercer (1856–1930), an academic archaeologist and ethnographer who shifted gears mid-life to become a tile designer and entrepreneur. Born five years before the start of the Civil War, Mercer was a productive and privileged life-long resident of Doylestown. As an academic, he was a member of numerous societies and worked for many years at the Free Museum of Science and Art (now the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia). As an archaeologist, Mercer conducted research, published, and guided the development of some of the University Museum’s early collections. He was very interested in early American and European medieval cultures. His later tile designs were significantly influenced by this early archaeological research. 

Mercer’s entry into the world of ceramic production began in 1887. He cut ties with the museum and academia following disagreements and controversy with his colleagues. He then chose to follow an entrepreneurial path, propelled by the then-popular Arts and Crafts movement. He intended to mass-produce handmade pottery and tiles with a personal touch. After a few failed attempts at mastering wheel-thrown pottery, he settled on tile making as the best venue for his art business model. Mercer’s formula for success was simple: he would design the tiles and hire experts or master craftsmen to perform the mold-making and tile-production work. He learned through trial and error by building several smaller kilns/studios and keeping meticulous notes. Over time, he built a team that included a manager, foreman, and mold-making specialists. Mercer’s family ties, coupled with the success of his early tile making, led to commissions such as providing four hundred mosaic picture floor tiles for the Pennsylvania State Capital built in Harrisburg between 1902–1906. Between 1905–1906, Mercer also supplied decorative tiles to the Marlborough Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which was the largest reinforced concrete building in the world at the time. Through family connections and strong working relationships with architects in Philadelphia, Boston, and Chicago, demand for Mercer tile grew substantially. Mercer tile was used for fireplace ornamentation, flooring, and wall installation in homes and commercial properties. Recognition came quickly. He was awarded the Gold Medal for best tile work at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Mercer was then awarded a Gold Medal for Allied Arts by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1918. 

Mercer’s fascination with material culture and architecture led him to design and build the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works between 1911 and 1912. The building is a large U-shaped structure made entirely of hand-mixed and poured reinforced concrete, based on a Spanish Mission architectural style. Mercer appropriated the name “Moravian” from European immigrants who settled in nearby Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as a Utopian Christian faith community in the 1800s. This is consistent with Mercer’s characteristic pattern 

of viewing and incorporating historical content as thematic material in his work. He designed and built the neighboring Mercer Museum to hold his personal collection of American pre-industrial artifacts. He also designed Fonthill, his reinforced concrete home adjacent to the tile factory. These structures are now National Historic Landmarks. 

At present, there are approximately 6000 tile press molds in the collection at Moravian Pottery and Tile Works. Vance Koehler, curator, who is now on staff with Tileworks of Bucks County is in the process of cataloging the entire set of press molds. According to Koehler, Mercer based many of his art tile designs on historical and biblical themes using an idealized or romanticized notion of history. For example, his tiles retold common stories such as Noah’s Ark and Adam and Eve, or recast events from Colonial Expansion and the “discovery” of the new world. Mercer tiles also celebrated natural events, such as the different seasons, or drew upon more recent historical events as sources of inspiration. 

Mercer’s team of workmen did a lot of manual heavy lifting. They introduced locally sourced moist clay bodies (transported by horses and a flatbed carriage) into a large industrial mixer originally propelled by a steam engine. They rolled out and cut the clay by hand using hand tools, then dried and stacked the tiles for glazing. They then fired thousands of these tiles in coal-fired beehive kilns inside saggers (some of which were filled with sawdust). This firing technique added flashing and variation to the otherwise anonymous tiles. Firing the kilns was hot and sweaty manual labor; the studio itself was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Counting pieces, fulfilling orders (packaging and shipping in reused wooden barrels), and billing were also part of the business. 

Mercer had several product lines. One type, the timeless and faceless quarry tiles, came in rectangles, squares, and other shapes. They were mass-produced by hand and finished with a uniform glaze, but due to firing exhibited natural variation and occasional effervescence. (Think of the green tile around the fireplace in the movie Beetlejuice! ) The pottery also produced a rather anonymous flat brick-red terra-cotta tile with flashing. Concurrent with the production of industrial quarry tiles, Mercer also produced decorative tiles. Decorative tiles were individual low-relief tile pieces hand glazed with various images and designs using slips, underglazes, and overglazes. Additionally, Mercer increased the scale of his imagery and expanded his product line by creating mosaic tile pictures. In these mosaics, various tile pieces were set in concrete against a solid ground. Mercer’s most famous product line, however, consisted of high-relief or brocade tiles which were and are still sought after. 

In terms of the production process, Mercer would labor over small drawings for his tile designs. He would then delegate the rest of the work to his team. Frank K. Swain managed the entire operation and Benjamin Barnes worked as the foreman supervising production. Clay modelers such as George Jacob Frank and Jacob Nice were the experts in translating Mercer drawings into finished tiles. George Frank would construct and model in low or high relief an original master tile from which a plaster mold would be cast. That plaster cast was then used as the press mold from which all other subsequent tiles would be made. The handmade decorative tile and high-relief narrative tiles were treated with a combination of slips, underglazes, and overglazes. This accentuated and highlighted the narrative relief elements of each tile. The skill of the craftsmen who worked at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works was paramount to ensure consistent tile manufacture and customer satisfaction for decades. 

Mercer passed away in 1930 and gave the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works to then-lead factory manager Frank K. Swain. Swain managed the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works for many years. He experienced the ups and downs that followed in American history. For example, they were impacted severely by the Great Depression and again during WWII when production was temporarily prohibited by force of law. After 1956, the aging Swain let go of running the operation. A couple of years later, the land, facilities, and their contents were sold to a local resident who left it underutilized and mostly dormant for over a decade. In the late 1960s, negotiations started between the owner and the county, which eventually purchased the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in 1968. Tile production began anew in 1974, kicking off approximately 50 years of continuous use as a small-scale tile production site. Through this sequence of events, an authentic working history museum was born. 

Tileworks of Bucks County 

Since 2021, the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works has been operated and managed by Tileworks of Bucks County. Spearheaded by leader Katia McGuirk, an avowed lover of ceramic tiles, Tileworks was formed to take the burden of site management off the county, which still owns the place, and to save it from closing. Three main outgrowths of this arrangement are: first, tile production remains part of the site’s operation as a living history museum; second, the ongoing curatorial and preservation work around Mercer’s tiles and mold collection continues; and third, education and community outreach programs have been revitalized to attract tile lovers, scholars, practicing artists, young people, families, art aficionados, and tourists to Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown. Instead of coal-fired beehive kilns, all new tile work is produced in electric kilns or a Bailey down-draft gas kiln. Art tiles are still in production. In general, there are A) Mercer-era historic tiles, B) art tiles created between 1930 and 1954 by Mercer’s immediate successors, and C) contemporary customized art tile designs created after 1974. A contemporary custom ceramic tile might feature an early Americana Burpee tomato seed package, a summer honeybee, a friendly feline, or a stylized ornamental owl. There is something special about tiles made with this personal touch! At present, you can go online and order custom art tiles directly from Tileworks. It only takes a few tiles to animate a kitchen backsplash or a bathroom wall, or you can enliven a space with living history by hanging or framing a historical tile piece in your living room, bedroom, or hall. For me though, I prefer visiting Tileworks in person. A live walk-through provides a richer understanding and appreciation for the work and the context within which it is made. 

Pivoting to the Future and Ongoing Mysteries 

There are still mysteries surrounding artifacts from Mercer’s life. Whatever happened to the extraordinarily large safe that was removed and later opened in public? It contained glass negatives and many of his drawings, but this early 1900s company safe disappeared. Where is it? Also, other things seem to have disappeared. For example, where are the actual awards and medals that Mercer received from the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair and the 1918 Gold Medal Award from AIA? Are these missing historical artifacts tucked away and forgotten in someone’s attic or barn, or were they buried with him? We must give Vance Koehler, curator, credit for building the collection of Mercer’s works that exist on site. In 1989, Koehler began the process of acquiring installed tile works and other elements of Mercer tile production that were dispersed throughout the US. He worked on that project with the county until 2012. Presently, he is working on cataloging the extensive plaster mold collection that was designed by Mercer. 

The other mystery is how well Tileworks will fare in the future. Tileworks has dynamic leadership and a clear vision for community engagement. Tileworks is clearly committed to ongoing small-scale tile production for clients and collectors, and recognizes the significance of preserving and promoting the history of Mercer’s tile work. But every organization has needs. My impression is that Tileworks would do well to bring on board an astute, organized, and likable arts administrator who could shoulder some of the far-ranging day-to-day operations and allow others to grow the tile business and donor-relations side of things. 

From a consumer viewpoint, if you are a builder, contractor, hotel owner, or homeowner interested in making a personal statement through tile, Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is a must-go-to-stop. If you are curious about American history and have an interest in ceramics, the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works is also a must-see destination. And why not? Doylestown is a trending small-town city, home to the James A. Michener Museum. Grab a cup of coffee, get a slice of pie, and head to Bucks County to immerse yourself in an eye-opening experience at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works. Who knows? Maybe you’ll come back with an art tile that provides a tangible memory of your visit and resonates with your own life experience. 

the author Andrew Buck, EdD, is an artist and arts writer who enjoys contributing to Ceramics Monthly. See more, https://andrewbuck.nyc.

1 On-Site Oral Interviews with Katia McGuirk and Vance Koehler, Tileworks. Doylestown, PA. August 13, 2024. 

2 David Driscoll. Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) No. PA-107. National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior. N.D. 

3 Mallory Leach. https://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/literary-cultural-heritage-map-pa/bios/Mercer__ Henry_Chapman Pennsylvania State University Libraries – Pennsylvania Center for the Book, Spring 2008. 

4 National Register of Historic Places. https://catalog.archives.gov. DL Aug 3, 2024. 

5 The James A. Michener Art Museum. Artists Biography: Henry Chapman Mercer. https://bucksco. michenerartmuseum.org/artists/henry-chapman-mercer/. DL Aug 8, 2024.