Selling romance, one square at a time
Jeff Cane proudly calls himself a forger. In the three-car garage of his Sylmar house, the British expatriate creates replicas of 15th century tiles by mixing modern-day technology with centuries-old techniques. His thick, colorful tiles -- used for everything from trivets to wall decorations to floor coverings -- look as if they were just unearthed from an old European estate.
“I think tile art is fantastic,” said Cane, 58. “But 300-year-old tiles will cost thousands of dollars. So why not create something that looks like it costs an absolute fortune but doesn’t? I wanted to make something that a burglar would stuff into his coat liner if he came across it at a Beverly Hills home.”
He won’t divulge all his techniques. (“It’s like the Coke recipe,” he said.) But the process involves placing re-creations of ancient images onto inch-thick primitive-looking slabs that he molds. The sides of the tiles are then pounded and chipped to make them look old. “This is decoupage to the highest degree,” Cane said. “It’s all about faking you into thinking it’s real.”
There are a number of artisans at work today reproducing tiles that look as if they were produced years ago by Malibu Tile, Batchelder and others. Few, however, have taken the art of tile reproduction back to the Middle Ages. Cane’s pieces have been featured in catalogs, including Horchow and Ballard Designs, and gift stores. He also showcases them though his website, www.anenglishmaninla.com. Recently, while watching an episode of the MTV reality show “The Osbournes,” he spotted one of his pieces -- a decoupage plaque of an angel.
Cane started producing the tiles about a decade ago, after pursuing a variety of other creative interests.
During the 1980s, he was a cult figure of sorts in Great Britain, where he recorded Monty Python-type sketches on his home answering machine for hundreds of callers who paid a fee to hear the message each day. “I had a seriously great life, but I had swapped creativity for cash,” said Cain.
He came to Los Angeles to visit a friend in 1991 and realized he wanted to start a new life here. So, he packed up his house in London and moved to L.A. a year later.
Once settled in his new home, Cane decided to launch a business making medieval-looking documents on gilded parchment paper. He created sample wedding certificates and displayed them at several posh hotels, gaining a celebrity clientele. Although he had plenty of orders, he soon realized that the creations took too much time. If he wanted to make a living, he would have to come up with something that could be produced more quickly. “Unless you’re the Hockneys of the world, getting extraordinary fees for single pieces of work, you have to mass-produce,” Cane said.
He wanted to find a way to use the “bits of paper” -- lithographic prints and copperplate etchings -- he had collected. One day, while browsing in a tile store on Melrose, he spotted a box filled with 200-year-old French chateau tiles.
“They were old and funky-looking,” Cane said. “I thought, ‘Wouldn’t they be great with an image on them?’ ” He bought some and started experimenting with various terra cotta mixtures. Next, he covered the tiles with re-creations of images he had collected. After experimenting with various finishes, he finally had the right formula to make his “fakes.”
His pieces, which sell for $50 to $300 each, feature colorful pictures found at estate sales, on the ceilings and walls of old Italian churches and at flea markets. “I’d go regularly to London to rummage through old bookstores,” Cane said. He’s produced a series of platters and wood tablets using photographs he took of angel statues in London’s old Highgate Cemetery.
“I’ve always been someone who sets his sights on something, then enjoys the process,” he said. “When you set down an avenue of experimentation, you always find other roads leading off.... In a town that holds youth as its holy grail, I’m the one going against the grain by trying to make everything look old.”