Mary Katrantzou designs new tile collection for Villeroy & Boch

Villeroy & Boch tiles has unveiled its first designer collaboration in more than 20 years. Created by leading fashion designer Mary Katrantzou, VICTORIAN is a vibrant and colourful tile collection inspired by the art of lepidopterists and the geometry of traditional Victorian tiles. Captured by the creative vision of Katrantzou – an acclaimed designer with a strong passion for premium and timeless elegance, as well as an appreciation of craftsmanship and tradition – Villeroy & Boch tiles saw the opportunity to create a signature collection that would lend itself to the designer’s unique aesthetic and style.

When Katrantzou was first approached by the tile specialist, she was instantly drawn to its over two centuries’ history of design and manufacturing. The designer was keen to convert her approach to fashion into a spatial context of walls and floors, blurring boundaries between decorative mediums and drawing inspiration from objects, interiors and art. By visiting Villeroy & Boch tiles’ headquarters in Merzig, Germany, Katrantzou learnt more about the process behind the creation of its tiles. She also discovered that tiles from this era were still present in one of the hallways on site and realised that 19th century Victorian tiles have truly stood the test of time, being as fashionable today as when they first came into style.
Katrantzou felt that this collaboration with Villeroy & Boch tiles should be an exercise in the understanding and application of balance, symmetry and proportion, and that striking a harmonious balance between colour, pattern and form is just as important in interiors as it is in fashion.

Image credit: Villeroy & Boch / V&B Fliesen GmbH

As a former architectural student, she also explored Victorian interiors and ornamentation in her own Autumn/Winter 2018 Collection. As a result, the designer and Villeroy & Boch tiles decided to collaborate on a collection that interplays between their respective archival designs.
Butterflies are central to the new VICTORIAN collection. A recurring theme in her fashion collections, Katrantzou sees them as one of the truest examples of metamorphosis. The designer wanted to utilise butterfly prints to communicate optimism while transforming tiles into a collectable piece of art. Another theme central to Katrantzou’s work is that of postage stamps. She believes that they “exude the allure of faraway lands and make you dream about what each piece of paper represents, where it might have been, who has touched it on its journey round the world.” In a world where stamps are becoming obsolete, the designer appreciates them even more “as tokens of the past and relics of a different era”. Through the VICTORIAN collection, she wanted to create a vignette within the home, a window into the world that captures this sense of nostalgia but is equally graphic and modern in its design.

Image credit: Villeroy & Boch / V&B Fliesen GmbH

Gathering these themes together, VICTORIAN features eight different décor sets (20cm x 20cm) with borders and edges to complete the offering. Four coloured butterflies on either white or black backgrounds have been created using a combination of digital print and traditional screen-printing, with light visual 3-D effect used to provide a handcrafted appearance to each tile. Seen either straight-on or at a 45-degree angle, each butterfly tile is enhanced with either gold, black or perforated borders. Continuing the theme of white, black and gold, authentic marble-effect tiles are offered in two different finishes – high gloss for walls and polished surface for floors. They are joined by concentric designs alongside modern graphic interpretations of Victorian tiles. The butterfly tiles can be used independently or in combination to create a design that perfectly suits every bathroom setting.

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Main image credit: Villeroy & Boch / V&B Fliesen GmbH