Clé Tile Transforms Warehouse Into a Showroom & Teaching Guild

Summer can be a time of renewal, and that’s doubly true for Deborah Osburn. The Clé Tile founder has transformed a warehouse in San Rafael, California, into a soaring 12,000-square-foot headquarters combining a showroom and teaching guild. At the same time, she became the exclusive U.S. distributor of Fornace Brioni, a century-old terra-cotta tile producer. Its new collection, Giardino all’Italiana, by creative director Cristina Celestino, was inspired by the manicured lawns and sculpted hedgerows of formal Italian gardens. Marbled non-vitreous tiles, in dusty shades of clay and mud, mix with solid-color variants, the mainly unglazed shapes striking a balance between linear and curvilinear.

