Winter Holiday Clean Up

In 2013 we spent the Winter Holiday doing some major housekeeping. It worked out so well we did it again this past holiday vacation! 

This time we tackled the car kiln room. It was pretty dark and dirty back there...

With lots of old peeling paint.

So we gathered a crew and built some scaffolding above our custom made car kilns.

We cleared out all the stuff that collects in dark, neglected corners

We scraped all the old peeling paint off the great wooden ceiling and beams and set to work painting everything else white.

Just the new paint brightened things up but we also replaced all the lighting

A new year and a new bright clean kiln room.

Take a tour of our factory and see our awesome kiln room for yourself! Just give the Portland showroom a call at 503-231-9464 to set up an appointment.

Tilikum Crossing - Bridge of the People

This summer Pratt & Larson had the honor of working on a project with TriMet, Portland's transit authority. 

Tilikum Crossing - Bridge of the People Image courtesy of TriMet

The latest bridge to cross the Willamette River in Portland since the Fremont Bridge in 1973, the Tilikum Crossing was designed specifically for pedestrians, cyclists, buses, light rail and the street car. In fact even it's name means "people" in the Chinook Wawa language used by the traders in the Pacific Northwest in the 19th century. Check out this cool time lapse video of the building of the bridge.

The Sonic Dish

Artists rendition of the Sonic Dish

TriMet allocates 1.5 percent of a projects budget toward art installations along the transit line. One of the art installations for this project is the Sonic Dish, designed by artists Douglas Hollis and the late Anna Valentina Murch. Here's a great 1 minute clip about them.

The idea behind the Sonic Dish is to link the bridge to it's surroundings by amplifying ambient sounds under the bridge as pedestrians and cyclists pass the bridge's curved abutments. The environment plays an active role in the artwork, in the same way that the changing lights illuminating the bridge at night are controlled by changes in the river. The image above explains how the dish will magnify the sounds and focus them at a point 5 to 10 feet from the wall. Of course, its also meant to be a visual experience as explained by Mary Priester, manager of TriMet's public arts programs."The dish is there to be experienced as it is; more art than science, as much visual as aural"

Here's the Sonic Dish's underlying concrete structure. Pratt & Larson supplied the tile that would be attached to this surface. We made 1400 square feet of  white 2" circle tiles and mesh mounted them in our factory just a few blocks away from the bridge. That's 63,000 tiles!! We also mounted 436sf of smaller metal circles in sheets to make installation easier. As you can see our team had a great time visiting the site:

The tall guy overseeing the installation here is our CEO Timothy Roberts.

And our Production Manager, Anthony Asch. Obviously the hard hats were a hit with this crowd.

Here you can see the two different kinds of tile as they are being installed. 

Curved surfaces are very challenging to install flat tile on. These guys did a great job!

This shot shows the finished grouted installation. 63,000 white circles!!

The east side Sonic Dish, completed.

The bridge doesn't open until September 2015 but the Springwater trail is open again and passes right under the bridge by the Sonic Dish.  Check it out and let us know what you hear!

Tilikum Crossing Fact sheet

1/5/15 - Update - They took the fencing down so now you can go and try it out for yourself!

Coverings 2014

It was so wonderful to see everyone at Coverings this year! It seemed like everyone was in good spirits and having lots of fun. We got lots of terrific feedback on our new products too. Here's a little recap in case you didn't make it to the show this year. Not everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas after all!

Building the booth

The outside of the booth featured factory images

The tiled entry

Building the booth was quite an undertaking! It took a week of hard work at the convention center to put it up and getting to that point was months in the making back in Portland.

From the very beginning

Our focus this year was on new Sales Tools for our vendors. We offered the newest version of our Sales Tools Credenza and a great new way to show our tremendous color palette and our shapes and sizes in new framed display panels.

The Sales Tool Credenza with the 2x4 Color Palette Panels

The Color Panels also come in 2x2's which allows you to show all our colors in a smaller foot print

The Shapes and Sizes Panels show our best selling field tile sizes and shapes and all of our mosaic sizes are grouped together so you know which ones come mesh mounted.

The Mosaic Package

The Mosaic Package is a fun new way to display our huge assortment of mosaic patterns. The package comes with 20 Mosaic Pattern 12x12 display boards for the wall and a floor box that can either hold 32 more display boards or 56 white pattern tool boards. With the rising popularity of mosaics this is a terrific new package for any showroom.

The Mosaic Package

Large display panels show off new product

We had lots of new product to show as well! This wall featured large displays of our new pieces. Larger format tile has been very popular lately and we have some new sizes available like 6x18! We also presented the new Textured tiles at the show along with our new dimensional tiles - like the new 5x10 Bevel and the Recessed Frame series. Check out the new Catalog Addendum available on our website. 

Michael Pratt & Tim Roberts inspecting the booth before the show opens

The booth was packed for days!

We took in the sights

We found a little time for fun at the Art Tile Party

Packed up and going home.

We found a little time to take in the sights and we had fun at the Art Tile Party and before we knew it, it was time to pack it up and go home. We hope you had a great time at the show too! Let us know if there is any info you'd like about our new products or how to order the new sales tools for your showroom. 

New Displays in the Pratt & Larson Showroom

We've been doing some rearranging in the showroom and there's lots of new products, displays and work areas. Scraffito is a brand new line which will be officially released soon but you can have a sneak preview in our Portland showroom. We installed a beautiful new floor pad and there are 12 new concept boards to showcase it. I'll blog all about it when it's officially released.

Setting the new Scraffito floor

Laying out the tile to make sure the variation in color is spread out evenly.

Grouting the new floor

The new Scraffito floor in S14

New Scraffito display boards

There is a new Pratt & Larson color wall with our glazes shown on 2x4's and organized by glaze family. It's next to the new work table and hangs over the credenza with all the parts and pieces so everything is close at hand while you're designing.

The new work table and color wall

New Shapes and Shadow Boxes

All of the tool boards have been rehung. I think the gray wall helps to make the pieces easier to see.

The Intaglio display has been rearranged too and there are 6 new display boards.

The Intaglio series

Here's two of the new Intaglio boards. 

Decorative tile themes

Craftsman glazes and themes

Simple Solutions

There are still more changes in the works including new display for some of our vendors too!
Stop in and tell us what you think!