Flint, Michigan is famous for being the home of Buick Motor Company, America's oldest surviving automaker. I knew it had a well-respected museum, a common feature of his Midwestern city that grew rich from the industrial boom of the 19th century.th and 20th For centuries it has sought cultural fame, but it never occurred to it that it was a center for the arts. However, thorough investigation revealed an interesting, original, and unique relationship between this tile company and the automotive industry.
Albert Champion was a highly successful French-born bicycle and motorcycle racer during the first decade of the 2020s.thHowever, when he came to the United States to compete, he had trouble sourcing quality parts for his bike. So he decided to import his own spark plugs from France and founded America's first spark plug company. His efforts eventually became Boston's Champion Ignition Company, and then, due to a nomenclature dispute with his co-founder, the AC Spark Plug Company. In 1907, due to the quality of Champion's imported products and his racing reputation, William Durant, founder of the vertically integrated General Motors consortium, hired him to manufacture spark plugs for GM's vehicles. I was forced to sign with AC. Champion moved his business in 1908 to a new factory built by his GM in Flint.
Everything seemed set for success, but there was a misfire. According to historians Margaret Kearney and Ken Garbus, authors of the definitive book: Flint Firen Style: A to ZDuring World War I, AC's supply of French ceramic insulators was interrupted by the German occupation. With the help of engineers at Ohio State University, the factory developed a proprietary ceramic material that is in abundant supply throughout the country.
The war and its manufacturing needs also brought about other advances in production. “Tunnel kilns started being used in Flint around 1919,” says William Walker, a veteran ceramic engineer who has worked in the spark plug industry for decades. Tunnel His kiln is a 35-foot-long continuous dome-shaped brick oven with the heat source in the center. It features a conveyor that shuttles ceramic parts back and forth through a lengthy heating, firing, and cooling process. This innovation has increased efficiency. However, production did not always require the full capacity of large machines, and when workers shut down underutilized kilns to save fuel, the heat dissipation cycle caused structural problems. . “When the bricks cool, they start to crack,” Walker says.
Tiles from the tunnel kiln, 1929.
Durant and Champion came up with a novel solution. They decided to find a joint use for the kiln, which would allow them to use the extra manufacturing capacity to keep the oven heated and running. There was a housing, industrial, and retail construction boom. There is a renewed interest in decorative tilework from the Arts and Crafts era. A meeting between Champion and Belgian ceramist Karl Bergmans led to the decision to establish a tile company. As a result, in 1921 an auxiliary air conditioning business, the Flint Faience Tile Company, was formed.
The first time I saw this tile was in a real estate listing. new york times. The kitchen walls of a five-bedroom brick house built in 1927 in Detroit's University District, near where my father grew up, are covered in them, and the glass is cloudy but charming. It had a shining celadon green color. At first, I thought they were from Pewabic Pottery, a famous pottery studio from the Detroit Arts and Crafts era. However, the article explains that they are original to the house and come from a company called Flint Faience, which is how I learned of the connection between automotive ceramics and decorative ceramics.
“their [tile] “The styles ranged from Arts and Crafts to Art Deco, with great crystalline glazes and many innovations,” says Art Historian and Founder and Director of the International Tableware Museum in Ann Arbor, Michigan. says Carney, who is also a co-author of the book. The aforementioned books on the theme of flint faience. Some designs depict religious iconography, fairy tale characters and settings, objects such as buildings, birds, fruit, and plants, while others are more decorative, like mosaics. Some were mosaic-like, some were large-scale murals, and some were large-scale murals. It was monochromatic in every muted shade imaginable.
The company claims in its promotional materials that “Fain Style has over 5,000 uses,” and that may not be far off. In addition to typical floors and walls, Carney's book describes fireplace surrounds, ashtrays, stair risers, towel rail holders, bookends, table tops, radiators, his grills, store entrances, and more. It shows an image of a quirky faerie style sandbox, drinking fountain and terrarium combination in an elementary school classroom. A faerie-style pool and deck on an ocean liner or at Kykat, the Rockefeller family mansion in New York. A faerie-style bathroom in Peru's presidential palace. Tiled stairs at the U.S. Customs House in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Coming full circle, flint faience tile had a special relationship with the automotive industry. These were used throughout his 1920 Albert Kahn-designed General Motors headquarters building in Detroit, known at the time as the largest office building in the world. They were also plastered on the floors and walls of car dealership showrooms across the country, and advertisements at the time touted the fact that they were “economical, easy to maintain, and even oil-resistant.”
Additionally, the ceramic clay used to create the tiles was primarily excavated and shipped from mines in Zanesville, Ohio, although key ingredients were added on-site during manufacturing. “They were using crushed spark plug refractories,” Walker said, referring to the hardened, high-temperature ceramic material used to support the AC's insulation when firing it. . “They mixed it with this ground material, grog, to make the product a little more durable.” Kearney notes, “This may have been one of General Motors' early recycling projects.” are doing.
The company enjoyed widespread success, with showrooms on Park Avenue in New York, Tribune Tower in Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, Atlanta, St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.According to company publications, Flint Faience's factory capacity doubled by 1929. AC Sparks. Despite this, the company lasted only 12 years and closed in 1933.
Myriad factors may have contributed to its demise. It may have been a victim of the decline in building construction caused by the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. Or perhaps it was slow to adapt to changing consumer tastes, as the Arts and Crafts movement came to an end in his 1920s. As Carney notes in his book, this may simply have been a sacrifice of GM's consolidation. GM determined that the tile business was foreign to the automotive sector and should be discontinued.
However, the most commonly cited reason was the opposite of why AC partnered with Bergmans in the first place. GM achieved great success during the Great Depression. According to a 2015 article: michigan history, The company's tightening and marketing efforts in booming downtown areas increased sales, and the number of GM cars purchased by Americans in 1933 increased by 50 percent compared to the low point in 1932. This increase in demand meant that factory capacity was better utilized for vehicle parts. “It was always built in the context of needing space in the back for the spark plug to fire,” Carney says.
It's a shame that weird artistic collaborations like this aren't more common in car manufacturing in general. It could also quickly become attractive, especially for the spark plug industry, as capacity is likely to decline again in the coming years. I asked Walker if electric cars need spark plugs. “I'm hoping to find applications,” he says. “But no.”
Brett bark (he/him) is a former kindergarten teacher and early childhood center director who spent 10 years as a youth and family researcher and currently works for CNN, new york times, popular mechanisms more. He has also published a parenting book. Parenting guide for gay men, We've driven and reviewed thousands of cars since 2008. car and driver and roads and tracks, where he is a contributing editor. he also Architectural Digest, Billboard, Elle Deco, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and vanity fair.
