An indoor garden made of ceramic tiles
The Webb home is adorned in numerous ceramic-tile patterns and depictions, including works inspired by Picasso and Matisse.
Last year, members of Norristown Garden Club visited Deb Webb’s home in Lansdale. The award-winning gardener was anxious to take her guests outside to show off the peonies, moonflowers, and other blossoms on her four-acre property.
Instead they marveled at the flower-themed ceramic tiles inside.
Club members admired the row of pink, blue, and yellow flowered tiles above a picture window in the sunroom, tile panels of multicolored blooms flanking the grandfather clock in the foyer, and the sunflower tile panel on a teal blue wall in the living room.
More sunflower tiles cover walls in the primary bathroom on the first floor. In the loft where the Webbs’ grandchildren play, pink and red petals extend from a three-dimensional flowered tile.
The artistic tiles were crafted by Deb’s husband, Rick. Flowers aren’t his only inspiration. A tile panel in his grandchildren’s bedroom depicts, from the beloved nursery rhyme, “the cow jumped over the moon.”
A grandmother clock in another bedroom incorporates tiles showing the zodiac signs of his and Deb’s grandmothers.
Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse influence several of Rick’s works. In his office where he sees clients as a clinical psychologist, a cabinet is covered with tile art resembling Picasso’s Girl Before a Mirror.
Tile decorates the wainscoting in the hall, a bench in the foyer, and a headboard in the primary bedroom.
One work in Rick’s otherwise joyful display is somber. On the staircase hangs a tile interpretation of Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica, measuring more than 3 feet by 6 feet.
Picasso used shades of gray, black, and white for his 11-by-25-foot oil painting of the tragic bombing of the Basque city in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War.
Rick, who calls himself a “renditionist,” colored Picasso’s wounded horse, winged bird, mother holding a dead child, and woman crying in front of her burning house. The work, Rick said, “is a reminder of the sorrow in the world.”
On a terrace outside the Webbs’ two-story home, stone arches are embedded with tile letters reading, “The powerful play goes on and thou mayest contribute a verse.” The words, Rick said, were taken from Walt Whitman and Hebrew writings.
During the pandemic, Rick and his three sons built an 11-by-9-foot stone tower in the backyard. The door has a border of blue Matisse-style dancers and zodiac tiles surrounding stars and other shapes inspired by the Alhambra in Spain. The structure serves as a storage shed and also as a playhouse for the older of the Webbs’ five grandchildren, aged newborn to 7.
Rick and Deb met in tenth grade in high school in Pittsburgh and married in 1972. They moved to Philadelphia to attend graduate school at Temple University. He retired in 2014 as director of counseling and psychological services at Haverford College. She was special-education supervisor at North Penn School District before retiring in 2011.
In 2002 the couple purchased a lot in Lansdale near where they were living and hired architect Connie Lezenby to design “a small cottage,” Deb envisioned. The larger-than-planned, 6,000-square-foot, white house with a red door includes bedrooms for visiting grandchildren as well as a playroom in the basement where Rick’s workshop and kiln are located.
Rick and Deb have always loved decorative tiles, purchasing Moravian tiles for their anniversary every year. The tiles first produced by Henry Mercer in the early 1900s have bucolic scenes and more subtle colors than those Rick has used since he began making tiles in the 1990s.
Moravian tiles decorate the space over and around the fireplace while the hearth is tiled with Rick’s more exuberant designs.
Deb was pleased her gardening friends admired Rick’s art. She does too, but, she said, “we are running out of space.”
She has decorated the home to complement the tiles. Walls are painted teal or pumpkin with white trim. The oak floors are covered in multihued Oriental rugs.
“Rick let me choose whatever paint colors I wanted, but insisted all the doors had to be red,” she said. “With so many colors, everything goes with everything.”
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