A broken-tile table, switch plates and a first kiln.

Mercury Mosaics is a handmade ceramic tile company in Minneapolis, founded and owned by Mercedes Austin. The company’s own story page gives its founding year as 2002 and describes it as a woman-owned business based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A Star Tribune profile published on 11 October 2017 told the early history in more detail: it said Austin got her start in 1999, when she launched a business called Mosaics by Mercedes in her apartment, and that “by 2005, Mercury Mosaics was born.”

The way that first business was paid for has become part of the brand’s story. The Star Tribune said Austin, a fine arts graduate, funded it with a tax refund and the proceeds from selling her jazz CD collection, and a later profile in the trade magazine TileLetter says the same money bought the first kiln for Mercury Mosaics. Her early stock, according to the Star Tribune, was light-switch plates and higher-end mosaic pieces, sold on the art-show circuit and through local gift shops. “I wanted to get into people’s homes with smaller purchases,” she told the paper.

TileLetter traces her interest in mosaic further back, to a college roommate in Northeast Minneapolis who broke up tiles to make a mosaic table. Austin told the magazine she was “immediately awestruck.” The Star Tribune said she learned the craft and the business by working for a small local tile company, travelling to industry shows and taking lessons in Italy from an artist who told her, “First you must learn the rules, and then you can break them.”

A fish-scale tile and a studio in Northeast Minneapolis.

The product that came to stand for the brand is the Moroccan Fish Scale. The Star Tribune called it Mercury Mosaics’ signature tile and Austin’s favourite shape, and its 2017 photographs showed the process: makers cutting the scalloped pieces from strips of freshly extruded clay and applying glaze by hand, tray by tray, in small batches. “Moroccan fish scales are a universal language,” Austin told the paper. The same article listed bubble tile, subway tile and penny rounds among the other shapes, and said the work was split between homes and commercial spaces, with installations around the Twin Cities including the airport, the Galleria and the Bachelor Farmer Cafe.

The Star Tribune described Mercury Mosaics as a company in northeast Minneapolis, and photographed it in 2017 settling into a new headquarters in the Thorp Building there, with plans for a showroom and an online shop. The tile is made in Minneapolis: TileLetter describes a factory where each piece is hand-cut, hand-glazed and fired before it goes to a customer, and the company’s website calls its tile American made.

Later growth followed the plans the paper had described. TileLetter says Austin opened a Minneapolis Design Studio showroom in 2022, framed in wood for what she called a “modern vintage feel,” and that the factory was later expanded. The magazine also notes two side outlets: Mosaic Candy Shop, which sells kits of repurposed and imperfect tile for people to make mosaics at home, and Mercedes Austin Art, which offers her own mosaic wall pieces.

Design and documentation.

Tile makers and tile brands sit at many different points in the trade, from small studios where a design is pressed, glazed and fired by hand to large manufacturers whose surfaces are sold through showrooms, distributors and home-improvement stores. Some names make every piece themselves, some import what they sell, and some do a mixture of both under one label.

A tile brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a repeatable vocabulary: a family of glazes, a set of patterns, a way of edging or texturing the surface, and the catalogues and showrooms that present them. Because a name can outlast its founders, change owners or move its production, the questions behind each one are worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its tile is actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its tile is made and how its look has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Colour names, blends and a line about originals.

The brand speaks mostly through colour. Its website sorts tile by colour and by named glazes, among them Iron Smoke, Olive, Marigold, Black Cherry, Satin Black and Cloudy Sky, and groups them into ready-made blends with names such as Mid-Century Modern, Dark + Moody, Vintage, Coastal and Jewel Tones. Customers can also build their own blend. TileLetter lists signature patterns including Craftsman Squares, Mid Mod Squares and a shape called Rise, alongside diamonds, hexagons, herringbones, triangles and penny rounds, and the current site adds Tudor, Kenwood and a Checkerboard collection.

The company’s home page states its position in one line: “The world has enough remakes. Each of our tiles is an original piece.” It also says its founder made mesh-mounted and sheeted designs a core part of the offer, so that handmade tile can be installed more like conventional tile. The Star Tribune described the same aim in 2017, quoting Austin: “We’re making tile designs accessible and approachable.” The paper said customers found the company through search, Instagram, Pinterest and Houzz, and that Austin ran mosaic classes for homeowners under the line “Anyone can be an artist for an afternoon.”

The same profile said Austin was working to bring standards and efficiencies to a craft in which each tile is cut and each colour applied by hand, with ideas coming from her staff: “We all contribute ideas to try to make it better for the next person,” she said. It reported plans for an online design calculator, and the current site offers a tile calculator. Her advice to homeowners was “Invest where it matters,” such as a fireplace in fish-scale tile or a custom shower niche.

Ownership has stayed with the founder. TileLetter describes Austin as the company’s founder and owner, and the website still presents Mercury Mosaics as woman-owned and based in Minneapolis.

For a design guide, Mercury Mosaics shows how a studio brand can make its glaze names and one signature shape carry its identity, with a founder’s story close to the surface. Compare Motawi and Heath Ceramics, two other American art-tile makers. For this guide we use iron smoke, marigold, olive and black cherry with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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