We’re redoing our bathrooms and I got fancy tiles for the floor, which left me unsure of what to do with the backsplashes… so I decided to try using the settings I found here to try out some tile engraving!
First I combed through Archive.org 's book section to find fairy tales from the turn of the Century. Artists like Mucha, Arthur Rackham, Henry Justice Ford, Edmund Dulac, and Heinrich Lefler to name a few. The scans they have are very high quality.
I did some experimenting with different tiles and slightly different settings but found the original settings still work best. The travertine tiles look AMAZING and I love them. They’re going in the big bathroom. The bathroom shown is the small bathroom and the tiles are mostly Heinrich Lefler. His more graphic style worked better than say, Dulac’s soft water colors- although I did figure out how to tune in photoshop to get a decent result for his work as well.
I tried a lot of different things to fill the engraving to make them durable for backsplash use- even going so far as making my own encaustic wax. In the end Rub-n-Buff worked the best. Unfortunately there aren’t many colors of that any more. I stuck with Black, Antique Gold, and Spanish Copper. The Queens of Clubs and Spades got black and the Queens of hearts and diamonds got the spanish copper for more of a reddish effect.
For anyone wondering why I want such fancy bathrooms, I have IBS. So does my mother and all the women in the family. So do most of my best friends. I also am lactose intolerant and have no gall bladder but i LOVE CHEESE. Needless to say we spend a lot of time in the bathroom and I’d like to enjoy my time there instead of dreading the wobbly, ancient toilet. For reference my house was built in 1958 and the original tub was still in- it was pink originally but had faded to a really unpleasant Caucasian flesh color. When we get the backsplashes in place I’ll take more pictures!