A view of Mount Pisgah from the Blue Ridge Parkway.
There are many reasons to visit the NC city of Bevard. There are waterfalls, the Pisgah National Forest, mountain biking, and when done having fun outdoors, there are the breweries. I was there to see my work from 2020 firsthand. A couple hired me to make tiles for three rooms in the craftsmen's house they were building there. It was the beginning of the pandemic, and with everything shutting down, it became hard to find materials which slowed the process down. They're in their new home now, and it was good to see them relaxed and happy in a personal and meaningful space.
Happy customers next to their art tile mural/kitchen backsplash.
As you pull up to the house, two themes work in harmony with each other, craftsmen styling and the natural surrounding of Pisgah National Forest. Both tile and artwork depict their love of our mountains and their great appreciation of the mountain flora's unique beauty. They hike frequently.
On arriving, I was a little confused; the navigation app said, "You've arrived.", but the house I was at looked all wrong. When I went a bit father and saw this home, I knew I was in the right place. When you pull up the first thing you see are the double garage doors and they are magnificently beautiful.
Once inside, the dining room is to your left and the fireplace is the first thing you see.
The house greets you with a mix of warm and cool colors and textures of wood and stone on entering.
The fireplace mural features monarch butterflies, Looking Glass Rock, Mt. Pisgah, rhododendron, black eye susans, turks cap lilies, milkweed, a stream, and a few fir trees.
To the right of the living room is the kitchen, really the two rooms are one big space with lots of room for living, socializing, cooking, eating and just being a family.
To photograph tile work with precise color, you'd have to be a professional photographer. Trust me when I tell you the black-eyed susans are a beautiful buttery yellow, and the lady slippers are pink.
The counter/bar on the left separates the living and kitchen areas. All the cabinets have drawers that pull out making appliances easy to store creating clutter free counter tops.
I love this owner's unique use of decos, the 3” x 6” tiles scattered in the kitchen backsplash. They’re larger versions of the trilliums, black-eyed susans, violets, lady slippers, and jack in the pulpits found in the main mural.
In the guest bathroom, located just off the kitchen and living room at the top of the hall, the focus is on oak trees. The tiles I designed for this project became my City of Oaks tile in the website shop. This bathroom is very welcoming: it's like being wrapped in a big bath towel by your mom when you were a kid. Such a different feeling from the sterile look of white and gray.
A bathrooms' lighting is always a bit dark; on the right are the tiles installed. To the left is the tile photographed in natural light.
In this image you can see how the City of Oaks tiles are spaced around the shower and how the border tiles are used to frame them.
We had a really wonderful weekend in Bevard and highly encourage you to visit. We visited Ecusta and Oscar Blues breweries; both were dog-friendly. The Bevard Brewery didn't have a dog-friendly vibe so we didn't stay.
Although we didn't bring our bikes this time, we did a little hiking in the national forest to see the Looking Glass Waterfall and Sliding Rock. The forest is totally enchanting, and I wish I'd visited before I did the project. I saw most of the flora included in the tiled kitchen backsplash. Beautiful trilliums and lots of turks cap lilies. We drove to the top of Mount Pisgah and took the Blue Ridge Parkway down to Asheville. You can feel the mountain magic disappear as you get closer to I40. We had a great time.
The view from our porch and a view of Look Glass Falls.