There was always a reason not to. A kiln that needed attention. An order that couldn’t slip. The quiet math of a small shop where the owner leaving for a week actually costs something. So I kept saying next year, and then next year kept arriving.
Something shifted this time. I bought the tickets first and figured out the rest after, which is not how I usually operate. And in the days since, two more projects have landed on my desk. I don’t want to make that mean more than it does. But it does feel like confirmation that I’m pointed the right direction.
What I keep coming back to
Here’s the thing I’ve been chewing on all week. I want Red Rock to grow. I’ve wanted that for twenty years and I’m not shy about it.
But I don’t want to grow into something else.
There’s a version of this business where we get bigger by getting more general. Wider catalog, faster lead times, less of my hands and my artists’ hands in any single order. That’s a real path and plenty of good companies have taken it. It’s just not the one I want.
What I want is to be the shop you call when the thing you’re imagining doesn’t exist yet. When the pattern in your head came from a piece of jewelry, or a floor you saw in a hotel in Mexico City, or a drawing your kid made. We’re set up to make that. Not to approximate it — to actually make it, by hand, in Nashville, by people whose names I know.
Growing, for us, means getting better at that. Better tools. Better glaze chemistry. Better systems so my artists spend their time making instead of untangling logistics. It does not mean becoming a catalog.
Which is why I’m going
Tecna is the equipment and materials side of the industry — presses, kilns, glaze technology, the machinery behind how tile actually gets made. Cersaie is the design and product side. Between the two of them, it’s the whole picture, and it’s the part of my own industry I’ve only ever read about.
I’m going to learn. That’s the entire agenda. I want to see what’s possible with the tools that exist now, and then come home and figure out which pieces of that belong in a boutique custom shop and which ones don’t.
Twenty years in, and I’m about to be the person in the room asking the most questions. That feels right.
Now I’m asking you
If you’ve walked either of these shows, I want to hear from you.
What should I make sure I see? Which halls are worth the time and which ones can I skip? Any equipment, materials, or makers you think a small American studio should be looking at? Anything you wish someone had told you before your first one?
Reply to this email, or find me on Instagram at @redrocktileworks. I’ll read every one of them, and I’ll report back on what I find.
The tile remembers who made it. 🧡