New brand Tilemark launches with carved tile collection designed by Form Us With Love

Dezeen promotion: custom carved tiles are the specialty of new Swedish brand Tilemark, which has launched with a debut collection designed by Form Us With Love.

The brand has developed a technique for carving bespoke designs, created through its online design tool, onto ceramic tiles by machine.

Entrepreneur Michael Hammar founded Tilemark wanting to emulate the look of design objects that had been hand-carved by artisans. Tilemark's technique allows designs to be produced on-demand at a fraction of the cost of hand-carving.

For customers wanting a finished design, Tilemark brought on board Swedish studio Form Us With Love – known for its work with IKEA and Baux acoustic panels – to develop the Trace collection of patterns, as well as a series of pictograms.

Form Us With Love also created special tiles for Tilemark's debut at Stockholm Furniture and Light Fair 2017. The tiles formed a giant map of Stockholm covering the brand's stall.

"We wanted to show how easy it was to carve something as detailed as a map using the machine, maintaining the same precision as a craftsman," said Form Us With Love CEO Jonas Pettersson.

"The graphic accuracy of Tilemark's tools are extraordinary. Imagine any vector, coming to life as a dimensional trace on a tile."

Form Us With Love's Trace Collection features four patterns: String, Stream, Stroke and Stick. The studio drew the nature-inspired patterns by hand, to demonstrate the machine's capabilities with organic shapes.

The patterns can be layered, repeated or resized for different effects using Tilemark's online tool.

In addition, Form Us With Love designed a library of pictograms for Tilemark. Including such symbols as arrows, male and female figures, and various forms of transport, the carved tiles can be used for signage on building interiors and exteriors.

"The carved tiles bring an interesting design dimension, utilised for distributing information, wayfinding, messaging and identity," said Form Us With Love creative director John Löfgren.

"[They are] a durable alternative to boards and signs, perfectly integrated in the wall."

Tilemark can convert most standard vector images into carvings. Tiles come in ivory, grey, sand yellow, brown and midnight blue finishes.

To find out more about the process and products, visit Tilemark's website.