Yahoo Autos Your Vintage Kitchen Tiles Might Have Been Made in a Spark Plug Factory
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."
Flint, Michigan, is famous as the home of the Buick Motor Company, the oldest extant American automaker. While I knew of its well-reputed art museum—a common feature of Midwestern cities as they became enriched during the industrial booms of the 19th and 20th centuries and sought cultural cachet—it had never struck me as an artistic hub. However, a deep search revealed an intriguing, original, and unique connection between this tile company and the auto industry.
Albert Champion was a wildly successful French-born bicycle and motorcycle racer in the first decade of the 20thcentury, but when he came to the United States to compete, he had trouble sourcing quality parts for his motorbikes. So he decided to import his own from France, creating the first American spark plug company. His endeavor eventually became the Champion Ignition Company of Boston, and then the AC Spark Plug Company due to a nomenclatural dispute with his co-founders. In 1907, the quality of Champion's imported products, along with his racing fame, compelled William Durant, the founder of the vertically integrated General Motors consortium, to contract AC to produce spark plugs for GM's vehicles. Champion moved his business to Flint in 1908 to a new GM-built factory.
All seemed set for success, but there was a misfire. According to historians Margaret Carney and Ken Galvus, authors of the definitive book Flint Faience Tiles: A to Z, during World War I AC's supply of French ceramic insulators was interrupted by German occupation. With the help of engineers at Ohio State University, the plant developed its own ceramic material, one that had a deep domestic supply.
The war, and its manufacturing needs, also ushered in other advances in production. "In Flint, they started using tunnel kilns around 1919," says William Walker, a veteran ceramic engineer who has worked for decades in the spark plug industry. A tunnel kiln is a continuous, domed, 35-foot-long brick oven with the heat source toward the middle. It features a conveyer that shuttles ceramic components through a lengthy warming, firing, and cooling process. This innovation enhanced efficiency. But production didn't always require the large machines' full capacity, and when workers would shut down underutilized kilns to conserve fuel, the heat dissipation cycle caused a structural problem. "As the bricks cool down, they start to crack," Walker says.
Durant and Champion came up with a novel solution. They decided to find a co-use for the kilns, one that could utilize excess manufacturing capability, allowing the ovens to remain heated and active. The boom in home, industrial, and retail construction that was occurring; the re-emergent Arts and Crafts-era interest in decorative tilework; and an encounter between Champion and Belgian ceramic artist Carl Bergmans all led to a decision to start a tile company. The result, in 1921, was the establishment of an ancillary AC business, the Flint Faience Tile Company.
I first saw the tiles in a real estate listing in the New York Times. They covered the kitchen walls in a 1927 five-bedroom brick house in Detroit's University District, near where my father had grown up, their glazing a murky but alluring range of celadon greens. At first, I assumed they were from the famed Detroit Arts and Crafts–era ceramics studio, Pewabic Pottery. But the article described them as original to the house, and from a company called Flint Faience, which is how I came across the connection between automotive and decorative ceramics.
