When our friend photographer Aya Brackett and her family moved into a house just across a shared courtyard from their former place in Oakland, California, they gained more space. But they found themselves missing one detail in particular: the handmade tile floor in their bathroom, an existing feature that had sold them on the house in the first place. Fortunately, they knew how to track down its creator, Sarah Myers?and understood it was a project worth the time, effort (overall bathroom touch-up included), and expense, to do right.
And so Myers was summoned and the many-months project got under way. A West Marin, California, artist and art teacher who grew up in Northern England?and has a masters in painting and drawing from Ohio State?Myers specializes in the ancient art of mosaic. And that involves cutting each tiny glass tile by hand. Here’s a look at the room’s various stages of transformation. Photography by Aya Brackett.
After

Above: Wanting to inject a bright, clean look to their master bath, Brackett and her husband asked Myers to create a floor evocative of “the ocean, fog, and the inside of sea shells.” The herringbone pattern is composed entirely of white opal glass tiles that, once laid on a mortar bed, present a dazzling range of shades varying from translucent to opaque and many points in between.
Brackett told us, she and her husband had been so taken by all the color options Myers showed them that they had initially p...