Karen Pearse Stone and Architectural Surfaces is an authorized partner of heritage French tile brand, Winckelmans. From castles and palaces to Haute Couture, Winckelmans’ exquisite French craftsmanship has graced the most prestigious environments around the world for over a century, including The Queen Victoria Building, Sydney; Luc Besson’s Cité du Cinéma, Paris; and Les Bains, Paris. 

Everything started for Théophile Winckelmans in 1894 when he opened an unglazed tile factory in Lomme, in Northern France.Five generations have followed since then, sustaining the legacy and know-how of the founder whilst meeting the challenges specific to each era: the World Wars and bombing of the factory along with globalisation and the need to open up to export are some of the challenges successfully overcome which have allowed the factory to remain on its original site for so many years.

The Winckelmans factory has been awarded the French Living Heritage Business label thanks to its attachment to traditional production methods that place manual craftsmanship at the heart of its activity. It exports its small tiles all over the world. Faithful to its founder’s vision, Winckelmans offers exclusive French production with unchanging prerequisites: natural raw materials, handing down of traditional know-how from generation to generation, and a constant attention to detail to be able to offer highly technical products that are also pleasing to the eye and in line with late 19th century production.

Winckelmans uses an atypical marriage of tradition and innovation to offer an authentic, quality product with nevertheless the flexibility of new technologies in terms of production times and customization.

‘‘Blur is an intuitive and sensitive approach that allows form and material to vibrate to the point of the elusive. It reveals what escapes rationality and leaves room for interpretation and imagination.’’ Launch of the annual collection ‘‘Le Flou’’, by RDAI.