Tiles

Reader-Viewer Dear, I will quickly show you the tile business owned by the late Henry Chapman Mercer, and then we will lay Henry C. Mercer to rest (er, you know, so to speak [he's been "resting" there in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, for nearly a century already) lest you get excessively bored with the tale of his wealth and his talent and his good fortune and his world travels and his fabulous buildings and...well, I'm quite certain he had his sorrows, too (and they may have been quite deep, for all I know), but I'm not privy to that information.

Anyway,  here it is, the Moravian Tile Works:

Here, Viewer Dear, is the HM studying the design of this concrete-poured building.

And, though he's fascinated and in awe of Henry's building ability,  HM is expressing some of the concern that people of Henry's day may have had in regard to this inventive man's buildings.

"Yikes, this whole thing is going to collapse in a heap of rubble!" (They may have said).

For HM and me, we had the advantage of a century's proof otherwise.  I had no hesitation walking into the building and spending an hour strolling around and viewing Henry's tile designs (which are still being manufactured right here, today, in this building, using the same hand-manipulated-clay methods).

Seeing as how it was an ordinary Monday morning, the place was not excessively busy.  The HM and I were shown into a room (Henry's office) where the two of us watched an introductory video (Since we'd already visited both the home and the museum of Henry C. Mercer in the previous days, we felt we knew nearly every detail the video was likely to share with us [Viewer Dear, you may have a similar sentiment right now if you're accustomed to reading my blog posts (and viewing all the clips, of course!)]).

I did learn one new fact, which alleviated my curiosity concerning the name that Hank gave his tile works (forgive me sincerely, Reader Dear.  I've taken liberties with Henry's own name; I may be the first person in all of history to refer to him as Hank, but I feel I know him pretty well; he deserves a nickname).

Work Area (as it was, and still is) 

This piece was for sale in the Sales Area (Even if this had been H.C.'s only design, I'd still give him six stars out of five, that's how much it pleases me [and you may have had a clue, as well, by the fact that I'm showing it to you twice, Dear Viewer!)

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R.I.P. Henry (aka Hank) C. Mercer