We are proud to handcraft our ceramic tiles in Stoke-on-Trent, the historical heart of pottery in England. We believe we are the last factory in the UK making extruded and hand cut earthenware tiles at scale. We are also believed to be the last factory in the UK that specialise in tube lining. This decorative technique was commonly used on Victorian and Art Nouveau fireplaces. Today, clients embrace its ability to enliven modern interiors with unique patterns and motifs. 

Phoenix Tile Studio, our Stoke factory, was founded in 1991 by Paul Gibson and Geoff Shaw, and employs a small team, highly-skilled in traditional British tile-making techniques. Many are born locally and have been with the factory, which we purchased in 2023, for more than thirty years. We are passionate about preserving their legacy and are in the process of training the next generation of makers to keep these skills rooted in Stoke.

Production begins in the clay room, where British grey earthenware clay is fed into an extruder and pushed through metal plates to create long strips. Individual tiles are then cut using metal cutters and left to air-dry for five to seven days before their first, 36-hour firing in the biscuit kiln. When scheduling production, we allow two weeks just for this first step of making the hard-fired ‘biscuit’ tiles.

Once fired, the off-white ‘biscuit’ tiles are ready for colour. Plain tiles are loaded onto a conveyor belt by the dip line team, where they are brushed, sprayed with water, engobed and glazed. We can run about 1,000 pieces in two hours on the dip line, whereas smaller orders, irregular shapes and more variable finishes must be sprayed by hand. We can only hand-paint eight to thirty tiles an hour, for comparison. Phoenix’s in-house glaze expert tests each batch before it’s used to decorate tiles. Glaze firings can take up to 36 hours, depending on the size of the kiln.

“Seeing the end product installed is always a thrill. As is opening a kiln door and realising you have smashed it — not literally of course!"

Decoration is where the factory’s most specialised skills come into play, and the team works with a mix of different techniques depending on the design. For tube lined designs, we apply a screen-printed outline in vegetable dye as a guide (it burns off after firing). A raised clay ridge is then applied by hand over the engobed and screen-printed tile. After another firing hardens the ridge, each section is hand-painted with glaze. Those ridges keep the liquefied colours separated in the final firing.

Other collections call for different decorative skills. For the Egyptomania tiles, the team works with underglazes and follows detailed colour placement notes for Louis Barthelemy's artwork. Fee Greening’s Curios illustrations are built up through successive stages of glazing, screen printing and firing. Mottled tiles take a looser approach, layering sponge-printed glazes and allowing the colours to deliberately run together in the kiln.

The same level of craftsmanship also enables the team to accept one-off commissions, including slip cast pieces, custom tile murals, and bespoke collaborations with artists and designers. With more than 200 base shapes, 50+ glaze colours and hundreds of patterns, each order takes its own creative direction. You’ll find examples of Phoenix’s work across a range of designs in our Hanley Hand Cut, Hanley Tube Lined, Terra Firma, and Mottled collections, plus collaborations like Fearless Eyes, Lioness & Palms, Egyptomania, Curios, Wayne Pate and Midlands Delft ranges.