Wall Mart

Paintings can go hang. Handmade tiles from the London studio of ceramic artists Nita Rege and Bessie Turner bridge the gap between fine art and function. Imprinted with images of everyday objects — knives and forks, faucets, martini glasses — and rendered in one of six pale glazes, the tiles can be applied in volume or in smaller numbers to add a decorative flourish.

"I'm fascinated by functionalism, but we approach each piece as an artwork," says Rege. "Some people even frame and hang them." Rege's life on the tiles began after Turner, a fellow graduate in ceramics from Edinburgh College of Art, started looking for tiles for her own kitchen. "Everything I saw was characterless — no wit or humor," says Turner. Inspired to set up their

Lambeth-based company, Blink, the duo eschewed the commonly used dry-press method, where fine powder is compressed to form tiles, in favor of wet clay production, which lends clay its personality as it dries. But it's an expensive method, reflected in the tiles' cost — $215 to $250 per sq m — and it spurred Rege and Turner to create seductive designs to justify the price tag.

"We wanted to get away from the Arts and Crafts thing by choosing contemporary, graphic images," says Turner. "The ideas evolved between us, trying to think of quirky things you could have on walls — a spider in the corner of a shower, or taps above the sink." That led them to incise the washing symbols found on most clothing labels into tiles. "We were amazed no one had done it before," admits Turner, while Rege says that she made use of her father's professional equipment for the carving work: "His old dental tools worked brilliantly." The results are toothsome. tel: (44-20) 7627 3603; www.blinktiles.co.uk