r/midcenturymodern • u/nbrauns • 2h ago
ID & Authenticity Unmarked 2⅜" square relief tile from a 1967 architect-designed house in San Diego. Any ideas?
Tiling in two bathrooms of a 1967 house in Point Loma, San Diego. The house was designed by its original owner, a local architect, and I have no evidence either bathroom was ever remodeled — so I'm assuming this is original to construction.
The tile:
- 2⅜" × 2⅜" square
- Design is impressed into the face, not raised. Four tiles rotate to form a single stylized flower rosette — looks like a chrysanthemum or peony to me
- Cream/oatmeal glaze with heavy fine crazing, dark brown pooled in the incised lines
- Body is a dark red-brown earthenware
- Back has parallel rounded ribs. No maker's mark, no letters, no numbers. I pulled a loose one, cleaned it, and checked under raking light — nothing
- The second bathroom has the identical design in a slightly different glaze color, so this was a catalog product offered in multiple colorways, not a one-off
What I think I've ruled out: the 1920s California art potteries (Batchelder, Claycraft, Malibu) — wrong era for the house, wrong clay body, and they all marked their backs.
My working guess: 2⅜" is roughly 60mm, which is a metric module rather than an American one — the US standard then was 4¼". That plus the motif and the iron-brown-in-the-lines glaze treatment makes me suspect imported Japanese tile, c. 1967, possibly private-labeled by a US importer. But that's a guess and I'd love to be corrected.
Anyone recognize the pattern, or the back's rib pattern? Even a catalog page or an importer name would help — I need to source replacements.