Frequently Asked Questions | Contact William Morris Tile
Catalog Morris De Morgan Arts & Crafts Pre-Raphaelite Victorian Medieval
Catalog Morris De Morgan Arts & Crafts Pre-Raphaelite Victorian Medieval
On this page: Contact Form Frequently Asked Questions
Form misbehaving? Write to me at WilliamMorrisTile at gmail.com -- not the main account but I do check it often!
If you have questions and are having trouble with the form, your question may already be answered on this page. Alternatively, you can call me. If I'm not available, please leave your full name (Spammers only have first names) and your email address (important!), as well as your phone number so I can get back to you.
Phone: 503-974-4888
(You can also text your email address to this number)
By mail:
William Morris Tile
2850 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., #429
Beaverton, Oregon 97005
Backup Email: WilliamMorrisTile @ gmail.com
(checked less often)
Fireplaces can take a lot of time, but not always. If you already know exactly what tiles you want to order, then we just have an informal conversation. But if you do require my help beyond a question or two, such as computing how much field tile you'll need, and so forth, you have the option of ordering a consultation. Projects such as backsplashes and baths usually do not require consultations, unless there are a lot of odd dimensions. If you've already decided on your tiles and are placing a deposit on tile, then we are past the consultation stage.
You need a conversation, not a consultation for:
- Not sure about color: Just order sample or test tiles. The color may vary slightly between runs but not very much, and are more accurate than monitors and my iPhone.
- Want color modifications: Just ask. If it's minor, no additional charge. If it's possible but arduous, I'll let you know that and we'll negotiate a price.
- How much tile you need: Send me accurate dimensions (length, width, height), not square feet. Do see How to Measure for Tile. I'll tell you if the tiles you want will work, can be made to work, or won't work.
- You need help choosing field tile. There is so much good tile out there. You can wait for your statement tile to arrive and take it to a tile store where the on-site designer will make a suggestion with the actual colors to hand. Or if you're in a hurry, order a sample tile while I make your tiles -- the color may not be exact but it will be in the color family.
You really do need a consultation if...:
If it isn't one of those, and you have odd dimensions or other oddities left by builders, or have other things to discuss that require a longer conversation, you might want a consultation. Consultations don't include sample tiles, but you can order those at the same time. A consultation isn't a commitment and doesn't queue your order.
- You want to modify an existing pattern for your fireplace: Some tiles can be modified for odd spaces and some can't. If I can change the design so that your installer can cut away part of the tile to fit the allotted space, I may send you a single mockup of the accommodation if it's possible without creating the entire tile on spec. If I can't, I'll try to suggest something else that might work within your parameters.
The main point of the consultation is to get the order straight and see if any variations will work. Most consultations and supporting work takes less than an hour. If that's the case, I credit your final order for the cost of your consultation.
You really need a designer, not a consultation
A consultation isn't the same as design services and using them that way can be very expensive. Consultation hours rack up and at the end, you don't have anything you can hold except an invoice for time spent.
- You have no idea at all of what you want and don't have the time to look for tile. Or you want to explore options with lots and lots of mockups. If you do want mockups, I can invoice you for them individually. But time spent on mockups, especially with revisions due to corrected measurements, and changes of heart can consume an inordinate amount of time that I have to charge for. All this greatly increases the cost of your project by several fold. A professional designer might be a more cost effective choice in this case.
Although I don't work with designers or third parties, once you have your specifications in hand, I am happy to work with you directly.
At present, I am only able to work with with homeowners directly. I am an independent artisan and I do not stock a line of mass produced tile from which I can send free samples. Neither do I have support staff to navigate the design process which can often churn with repeated phone calls and [sometimes lost, sometime walked off from] email lags while professionals get back to their clients. If your client is interested in my tiles, please ask them to contact me directly.
I sell consultations in two-hour increments, but if your project is complex and you need extra time, you can purchase additional hours. Most consultations stay under two-hours, unless there are mockups. In that case, I'll apply partial credit against the deposit on your final order.
Now that I've gone on and on about mockups, if we've changed anything, I often send one mockup just to make sure we're on the same page before we proceed to making tile. That's not part of a consultation, that's just making sure the order is correct. And I feel good about that because once we've worked together for awhile, the chance of my design being taken to a big box store and implemented with their tile is low.
Order a consultation online
or contact me for a proper invoice.
So to sum up: Informal conversation by phone call or email = no charge; Consultation = sold in two-hour increments; mockups = available, but not included; full service design = designers do it cheaper and arguably, better.
You can also order consultation directly online for us to discuss your project and work out some tile options for your project. The cost of your consultation can include a mockup or two or proof of concept to accommodate site quirks, and more, and will apply to a proper tile order. Be sure to include an email you read so I can contact you. You can order a consultation directly with the following link:
By ordering tile, you're agreeing to the Terms and Conditions. They're pretty standard (my inspiration).
Traditional Colors, Color Matching, Field Tiles (Background Tiles)
Urgencies, Changes, Replacement Tiles
Pattern Modifications and Mockups
Shipping Costs, Information and Delivery Instructions
Tile Care, Weights, and Specifications
Warranty, Terms and Conditions
William Morris Overview and text listing of all William Morris and early Morris & Co. tiles
Morris Tiles from Textiles - visual gallery
William De Morgan Overview and text listing of all De Morgan Tiles
Arts & Crafts Overview and text listing of both Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau tiles
Pre-Raphaelite Overview and text listing of all Pre-Raphaelite art tiles
Overview and Visual catalog of all blue and white tiles
Medieval, bestiaries, herbals, codices and star maps - Overview and text listing
The fastest way to contact is to use the contact form.
I enjoy talking about tile and home projects, but I understand that some people just like to get on with it, so if you are more comfortable with an invoice, we can make that work, too. I'll write you back, answer any questions you have, ask any questions I need to make your tiles, and get all our ducks in a row.
Of course, I can. Let me know the tile name and size and I'll let you know the cost or send you an invoice. Samples are full-size tiles and can be used in your project. Samples, like all my tiles, are custom-made so are not returnable.
I'm not a store that stocks mass-produced Morris-design tiles. I make each tile individually and I like to think that every time, I get a little better. Most orders ship within two to three weeks, but if you are time-crunched, let me know and I can see what we can do to get them to you faster. I sometimes have a limited number of overruns on hand, but the more time that has passed since they were originally made, the less likely it becomes that I can match them but if you need a very few tiles, do ask.
You can get a rough idea of cost from the individual product pages. An estimate really is a best guess, and I'll need your dimensions. Once you decide on a tile and request an invoice, those prices are good for two weeks. You can lock in a price by placing a deposit, even if you don't know the exact number of tiles you need.
I do! I have shipped tiles to the UK, Australia, Canada, Lithuania, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Japan, Ireland, Belgium, Italy, and Brazil, as well as throughout the US.
The base price is listed on each individual product page, but there are discounts if it is the featured tile on the day you order it or commit to it. I usually can't tell you how much shipping is until ship time. A rough estimate is that shipping will usually be 5-15% of your tile order, depending on where you are located and the kind of tile you get.
If you ask for an estimate with shipping, it is helpful if you provide your address, not just your country. Shipping costs are exact charges, plus $20-25 per box up to 22 pounds, $50 per box for up to 50 pounds, which is exactly what I pay. To give you an idea, thirty (30) 6x6 ceramic tiles, packed, weigh about 22 pounds (10kg). More about shipping and delivery.
I usually answer messages the same day. For phone calls, I don't answer when I'm making tile but leave a message with your number and a good time to call you back. If you don't hear from me within a day, I didn't get your message or my response is in your spam filter.
Possibly, depending on how many orders I have queued and the number and kind of tiles you want. If you need 300 tiles and aren't sure what you want and will need to compare sample patterns and colors and mull it over for a day or two, I can't meet that deadline. Shipping alone is 3 to 5 days. But if you know which tiles you want and have an idea how many and are ready to order tile, then probably yes.
Every tile is listed by name in the Site Map, a rather long and unwieldy page but comprehensive. It is also listed in the text listing at the end of the overview page for its corresponding major section. And it will be listed in the visual gallery for that section, although not all variations, colors and sizes appear in the visual galleries. If you're not sure the major section you're interested in, or how I classified something, take a look at the catalog -- the catalog gives a very short overview of the major section, links to the corresponding overview and visual gallery, and some representative tiles.
Maybe! If it's "I want an Arthur Rackham backsplash just like your Fairy Backsplash, except it has to be 56 x 90 and oh I have photos of the mural we're trying to replace that looks nothing like your Rackham images and they have to be modified for nudity," then no. But most reasonable requests, yes. Ask me. After we have the scope defined, custom and bespoke tiles cost the same as comparable as-listed tiles. There are no additional charges for small color changes. For more extensive changes and new designs, there are some nominal set-up costs which I discuss in How to Order Custom and Bespoke Tiles.
I guard my customer's privacy carefully. See the Privacy Statement. You don't absolutely have to provide your full name, address, and phone number, but I do flag these as casual rather than serious inquiries, since we'll need all of this if we're going to get serious about tiles.
Very possibly, but I've lost my confidence a bit. The more you can tell me about your tastes and space, including dimensions if possible, the better my suggestions will be. But if you have no idea what you like, I won't either.
On the other hand, if the situation is "I know I want Tile X but I need complementary tiles for a border or header row", that's encouraging. At least, I can tell you why some choices won't work, in terms of size and scale. Sometimes, I have tiles that I haven't finished that are not posted so don't be afraid to ask.
Assuming that you've partly settled on something you like, my first suggestion is that you order the tiles you already know you want and a sample tile of any of my tiles that you arent sure are right. I'll ship them with your order, which is a savings. You can then lay them out and see how they look to you. I make your sample tiles for you and they aren't returnable, so choose something you will also love as a trivet.
But also, there is a lot of really great tile out there, not all made by me, and once you have your "statement tile", you'll have true colors in hand to show tile store designers who know their stock and are usually happy to help you choose something that works.
You can use these tiles on walls, showers, bathrooms, kitchens, backsplashes, fireplaces, hearths (if they don't get a lot of foot traffic), and possibly counters if you aren't cutting directly on the surface. And people have been using them for those purposes for over a decade. They are not rated for floors or swimming pools. They won't stand up to repeated freezing and thawing.
No, and neither were Morris's, except the very early tiles, like those made for Red House. De Morgan's tile were never hand-painted, but used the "painted paper technique", where the image was fired into the glaze when the tile was fired. See my article, Morris & Co. Tile Making Process for a more in-depth discussion. (Also see Keeping the Art in Art Tile).
Maybe! I can invoice your business and specify a client or project if you tell me up front. Five or six or seven invoice revisions are not part of the cost of normal business and will burn up your free hours so tell me what you want ahead of time. On the other hand, I've had a very few requests to revise invoices to reflect different costs than actually charged, or to say the tiles are for business use when we've been designing a residential installation. I'm a small business and even forgoing ethical concerns, the risk is too great. You can put any notation you like on your check, of course.
Keep going! You're almost there. The fastest way to contact me is to use this form on this page. An email will come directly to my cell phone. Voice mail notifications are actually slower.
Please leave me your phone number and email address in your message so I can get back to you. If things proceed happily, I'll need all this information at ship time. If not, you'll still get a nice postcard in your mailbox during winter.
Why minimum orders? What's that about? Before an order is ever placed, there's information gathering and a lot of back and forth on tile size and colors and sometimes photographs of the area. I may do some mockups to help in those decisions. Once an order is finalized, there's the usual overhead in setting up and moving it through the process to shipping and delivery. To mitigate all that, there is a minimum order of 9 tiles for 4.25 inch tiles, 7 tiles for 6 inch tiles, and a minimum order of 5 tiles for 8 inch tiles. If a tile benefits a charity, such as the medieval dogs and cats, there is no minimum.
Because shipping a single tile takes almost as much time as shipping half a dozen, and because carriers have a minimum charge for delivery, the shipping and packaging for a single tile can be almost as much as the tile itself. This leaves a bad taste in people's mouths and they feel like I'm gouging. I'm really not. Once the tile is made, there's at least another hour wrapping it securely, getting postage printed, and hiking out to the box to leave a note for the carrier.
All that said, we may decide together that it's a good idea for you to buy a single sample tile. Sample tiles are full-size tiles, and you can often use that in your installation. If you are interested in a pattern or image that spans several tiles, I will make you a sample tile that shows as many colors from the overall mural as possible.
Catalog by major section with links to visual galleries
List of Customer Installation Photos
Main Page (scroll down to newest tiles)
The all-inclusive sitemap
and on the appropriate overview page:
New Tiles are also announced on Social Media: Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter first and then Tumblr, Google+ within a day or two. I no longer send email notifications because, quite frankly, they're spam.
