Tile Painting
When the government announced that hospitality venues must close, though anticipated it didn’t make the news any easier to process after being open almost every day for the past 14 years. We decided to use our time in lockdown to give the cafe a colourful make over, something we had always wanted to do but never found time to do it. As some of our regular customers may know, our counter is decorated with hand painted tiles painted years ago by staff members and pupils from a local primary school. This was something customers often admired and so we decided to decorate the upstairs back wall with a decorative tile display.
Once measured, we worked out it would take over 200 tiles to cover the area needed and with nearly 30 staff members at home we put out a message asking if anyone was interested in having some delivered to their house for them to paint. The response was great and it wasn’t long before the tiles were being brought back to Cobbles ready for Jill to fire them in our kiln. It was amazing to see the variety of tiles that had been painted; the intricate patterns, the artistic masterpieces and gorgeous designs painted by staff member’s young children.
After Jill finished the great mission of glazing and firing the pieces, it was time to start putting the creations on the wall. We’d like to say a huge thanks to Phil for helping us out with all the tiling! Once this was completed, we couldn’t help but think the newly extended till area would look great with the addition of a few tiles too...
And so we got to work again, this time as speedy as we could as we had been given the go ahead to open the cafe in just under two weeks. After the rules permitted us to meet for the first staff meeting in three months, we painted over fifty tiles together, chatted, laughed and drank lots of coffee!
Pop in and see our masterpieces which are located behind our till area and along the upstairs back wall, were keen to show our handy work off! We can’t thank all the staff members that took part in the painting enough, they look incredible and we’re grateful to have you as part of the team. Lastly, a few special shoutouts… Firstly, to Hannah E for bringing her illustration skills to the table and recruiting her little people to help create so many lovely designs. Janet for solo painting over 100 tiles , each with a different pattern on, they’re all great! And Nikola, for taking the time to paint such beautiful designs, so beautiful that we just had to put them as a main feature around and inside our fireplaces!
Photography by Aled Williams
