A seemingly never-finished building on the Corniche du Fleuve is the unlikely location of an otherwise lost craft: BlaTT Chaya produces patterned concrete tiles whose beauty is due to the fact they are hand-poured individually.
Edgar Chaya, owner of the company, is a kindly white-haired man who stands out with his pipe and cane. Although descending from a family of tilemakers since 1881, Chaya's field was finances and his forefathers' tile industry had come to a stop a good ten years before the war, due to a lack of demand and of workers qualified for the tedious process. He was the president of the Syndicate of Exchangers for 35 years before he decided he had had enough of finances. Retirement made him feel like he was getting old, but as luck had it, he came upon crates that had belonged to his uncle, who had been the family's last tilemaker. The crates contained pieces of tiles that caught Chaya's attention. He found a mold, from which he cast his first tile; from then on it became an agreeable hobby. "I started by playing like Lego," Chaya grins. That is, until director of the ALBA Georges Haddad dropped by for a visit, accompanied by an engineer friend. The latter asked Chaya why he didn't commercialize the tiles, as the demand was once again growing.
Chaya took the advice and for the past 7 years his little enterprise has been growing in reputation without any recourse to advertising. Interior designers in the country (and outside) are now aware of him and come directly to him for jobs that require durability, flexibility, or simply, the lovely patterns that only he can achieve.
The procedure was rediscovered by Chaya through much trial and error, but in no way changed. The molds, which actually look more like complex cookie-cutters (above), are compartmented, which requires a metal work so delicate Chaya has them made by jewellers. Colored concrete (moghraq) is prepared, using nothing but natural materials such as white sand for light colours and red sand for darker ones. A mold is placed in a square "pan", and the colours are then poured one by one and by hand into the appropriate compartments. Chaya points out: "What I had the hardest time with at the beginning was managing colours that would not bleed into each other". After the mold has been cautiously pulled out, a concrete backing is poured on top of the wet tile, which is now put through a press at 140 psi. It takes a drying period of 24 hours, followed by 10 days of curing (an alternation of dipping in water and being left to dry). "We have to be precise to the fraction of a millimetre!" he says – a necessary condition for the tiles to "tile" correctly. Entire batches sometimes have to be cropped by a tiny measure to correct a defection imperceptible to the eye.
As is unavoidable with a manual process, mistakes sometimes occur in the colour distribution, but some clients prize those more than perfect products: "One well-known systematically architect asks me to send him all the defective tiles. For him they have the artisanal touch, the human error." Similarly, some specifically require a special crackling effect to be applied, giving the finished tiling an aged look. And though it is traditional to think of tiles as destined to the ground or walls, Chaya is now using them to create tables of varied sizes.
The patterns themselves are sometimes Chaya's own invention, but more often inspired by ancient tiling or motifs found in museums and books. He draws them with the help of his son Karim, industrial designer, before having molds made. Chaya seems to make it a point to name each pattern after a place in Lebanon, and his catalogue runs from Aaley to Zeitouneh. A full pattern is not actually made up of a single tile design, but at least four: the "full-on" motif, the border, the corner, and the plain coloured tile that serves as a buffer zone, allowing the motif to be integrated seamlessly in a room of any dimensions. The result is highly versatile and can even be rotated to ornament circular rooms. A new pattern that is very popular is a strikingly modern arrangement of stripes. The complexity lies in the fact that it requires 7 colours of concrete, which is not easy to achieve "because by the time you're mixing the last colour, the first one has dried up".
Already Chaya's creations can be seen in 17 apartments in the Beirut central district, Al Bourj Library, AUB's West Hall, Nicely Hall and physical plant, ... The carefully made tiles are getting much appreciation from those that realize the rarity of the craft, both in Lebanon and abroad. French and American designers have dropped by wide-eyed to watch the work process. Yet although he receives orders from outisde, Chaya doesn't want to get into that: "I'd never be able to keep up," he says, waving his cane at his tiny work force and adding that, after all: "I am having fun."
      | Article by Joumana Medlej |