Meet a Maker: Edition 4

Meet Steve Sinnott

1. What is your craft and how did you get into it?

Steve started out as an apprentice stone carver at the age of 17. During his apprenticeship, a very large marble mosaic floor originally laid by Italian craftsmen in the late 17th century was damaged from hydrochloric acid while bricklayers were restoring a mansion in Northern Wales. Although this was outside their masonry training, the apprentices were each given a patch of the floor to work on and Steve did the best job out of the cohort, which resulted in him getting the added responsibility of relaying the rest of the marble floor, despite never being trained in mosaic tiling. The marble for the floor came from Italy, but it had to be further cut by hand. Three years later on the same project, Steve had cut over a million square inch cubes of marble for this floor. During this first tiling project, Steve was invited to do another project just before his 18th birthday. He was sent over to Manhattan, New York, to work on a historical mansion. This job sprung other projects for Steve across the world, which enabled him to start his own business in heritage mosaic tiling, with a speciality in Victorian tile floor restoration. Steve later on did learn how to make encaustic tiles, which are patterned tiles and geometric coloured tiles in various sizes, but he prefers to focus on laying the tiles rather than making them.

2. What is one interesting fact about you?

Steve’s tiling work has taken him to 21 different countries. The furthest northern location he worked in was an embassy in Alaska and the furthest southern place was New Zealand doing beach pebble mosaics. During these work trips abroad, Steve was able to enjoy the local scenery and activities like zip lining in New Zealand and fishing in the British Virgin Isles.

3. How long have you been making?

The self-taught tiler has been restoring heritage floors and creating tile mosaics for 51 years and has had his own business for 41 years.

4. Who is/are your favourite maker(s) in your craft? Anyone you admire in the craft world?

Steve is very proud of his student Sarah, who has been doing mosaic tiling for five years now and continues to work with Steve. He also enjoys looking at work done by makers in different craft fields. One maker that stands out to him is Jack Daniels, a stone sculptor in Portugal who thinks Steve would have been a great stone carver had he stuck to masonry.

5. What is the most challenging skill/technique you learned in your craft?

The most challenging skill in Steve’s work is cutting the tiles/raw material into the correct size for the project. A ton of time is taken into planning, prepping, and re-adjusting the project. Especially when working on historical floors in the Victorian period, Steve deals with materials from old companies that produce tiles sized in a way to prevent collaborative use with other manufacturers. Steve states that the company Godwin didn’t like their tiles being used with other tiling firms and therefore made their tiles to a ¼ or ½ measurement, which prevents a tiler from laying the uniquely measured Godwin tiles next to other tiles of different companies. Therefore, Steve must cut the tiles to match the specific sizing by hand, which is not only painstakingly precise work, but also time consuming.

 6. What is one thing you would want to do before you retire?

One thing Steve wants to do before he retires is to design a really big floor to do with a few of his favourite apprentices and then photograph the floor after completion. Many of Steve’s projects have been for government buildings across the world, and due to security reasons he can not photograph his work, even if it’s just a picture for himself.

Steve loves his restoration work on Victorian floors, however his favourite project was a relatively standard floor project in the British Virgin Isles. When he submitted his work proposal, his contact for the job said it was unacceptable. Instead of Steve’s proposed plan of working a full 8 hours each day for two weeks, the British Virgin Isles local stated he should work for three hours a day and then go fishing with him. Thus the project took five weeks and was full of amazing fishing.

8. If someone who knows nothing about your craft could know one thing, what would it be and why?

It’s impossible to say one thing, however Steve says that the biggest aspect to know about his restoration work in mosaic tiles is stubbornness. Tiling restoration is taking things apart and putting it back again, which is incredibly time consuming, but it is more stubbornness than patience. One must stick with the project to the end, and have the will to want to see the floor completed. Every project starts and ends with a single tile. You’re kneeling down on a floor for long hours, planning to ensure you start at the right spot, and taking it tile by tile. Steve mentions that restoring tiled floors is difficult work, because you need to have that stubbornness to keep that passion for the project going to the very end. One must envision the whole project, see the whole floor for what it is, match up the material, pivot when the plan doesn’t work, and persevere.

Learn more about Steve