A Homage to the Founders

“Where others saw commodity, they saw craft.”

Letter from Alvaro de Ferranti

Paris Ceramics was never meant to be ordinary. From its founding in 1981 by Steve Charles and Clifford Jones, it was a challenge to the uninspired surfaces that dominated the industry. Both master tilers, they had grown weary of lifeless products and sterile choices. Where others saw commodity, they saw craft. Where others resigned themselves to the dull, they sought out the extraordinary.

Looking to Europe and the Middle East, they found living traditions of stone, terracotta, and ceramic work that spoke with the voice of history. They brought these treasures back to London — reclaimed antique floors, colour-washed limestones, hand-cut mosaics — and with them they sparked a quiet revolution. Paris Ceramics quickly became known not just as a shop, but as a movement: a place where artistry was revived, where each floor carried not only beauty but a story, where the hand of the maker mattered.

“Each floor carried not only beauty, but a story.”

Yet as the years passed, the company was bought and sold, passed from one corporate hand to another. With each transaction, a little more of its spirit was stripped away. What had begun as intimate, daring, and rebellious risked becoming diluted — just another name in the marketplace. The soul of Paris Ceramics — that fusion of artistry, discovery, and devotion — was threatened by the very forces it had once stood against.

For me, Alvaro de Ferranti, Paris Ceramics has always been deeply personal. From 1998 to 2010, I had the rare privilege of working alongside Steve Charles, not only learning the technical mastery of surfaces but absorbing his vision: his patience, his curiosity, his refusal to compromise. It was an apprenticeship in craft and in values — a lesson in how surfaces could carry memory, meaning, and magic.

“It was an apprenticeship in craft and in values.”

In 2010, I purchased Paris Ceramics. My intention was not to reinvent it, but to return it to the roots that Steve and Clifford planted — to restore what had been eroded, to rekindle what had been dimmed, to give the company back its heartbeat. This new chapter is not a departure from the past, but a continuation — a homage to the people who changed the surfaces industry forever.

We are not here to sell products. We are here to honour traditions, to revive artistry, to tell stories through stone and terracotta and reclaimed floors. We are here to put the soul back into Paris Ceramics, relentlessly, piece by piece, floor by floor.

“To Steve Charles and Clifford Jones — your vision endures. This is for you.”

— Alvaro de Ferranti
London, 2025