Earlier this year we featured the striking tiled exterior of Café Tengo in St Austell, Cornwall. Created by Matter of Stuff, Teamwork Italy, and Studio HOTmess this 3D facade was made to honour the local area, utilising traditional techniques whilst adding greenery and contemporary intrigue to the town.
One half of the HOTmess duo is our creative of choice today. Charlotte Moore, raised in Cornwall’s Tamar Valley, builds her work around the landscape she grew up with. The region’s changing landscape – driven by centuries of human industry and, later, nature’s reclamation of abandoned land and architecture – informs Moore’s practice.
By blending organic shapes and sculptural botanical design into solid, architectural elements, a seamless partnership between humans and nature is imagined. Tiled facades featuring three dimensional ornamentation of fruits and foliage, or functional ceramic pockets for vegetation to root in form Moore’s portfolio.
Each work is site-specific, incorporating unique references and serving distinctive functions:
– The Lost Gardens of Heligan and local flora formed inspiration for Cornubia Tropicus – the shopfront façade of Coral & Moss in St Austell.
– The data held by pollen informed Pollen Syntax: Mapping its Molecular Lexicon – a spatial installation in London.
– Research by Professor Jill Burke and Wilson Boon (a historian of the body and soft matter scientist respectively), as well as 16th century Italian skin and haircare recipes is represented in the tiles and tabletops of The Beauty Sensorium – Baum & Leahy’s interpretative & sensorial installation.
A new post by Hanna Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, October 2025.