One day in the late 1980s, Lee Gruber and David Del Junco were standing in Fonthill, the enormous, rambling home of Henry Chapman Mercer, founder of the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. They were looking with admiration at the tile-encrusted walls, the tile floors and ceilings, the tile ornamentation everywhere - examples of the honest artistry and passion that Mercer brought to his turn-of-the-century revival of the dying craft in that region of the country. Somewhere at this point, they turned to each other and said,
"We can do this."

With that statement and Mercer's work as a criterion, they set themselves on a path that has demanded the highest standards of craft and creativity in the production of handmade tiles - standards they have unswervingly pursued from the inception of Syzygy Tileworks in 1993.

As an explanation of the name, Syzygy, taken from the Greek, can have several meanings, each appropriate as things progressed in the short history of the company. The enterprise was originally started with three persons, in which case its definition as an alignment of three obtained. When the third person left the business and the husband/wife team of Gruber and Del Junco remained, the definition as a yoke, or pairing of two together makes perfect sense.

The underlying philosophy of Syzygy as it was founded was that it was to be a regional tileworks, emphasizing the rich and disparate cultural influences of Southwestern New Mexico - Mexican, Mimbreno, Western - and that still remains a major raison d'etre. There is a heartfelt, underlying desire to leave an indelible mark in the community so that a hundred years hence it will be known there was a functioning, creative tileworks operating in Silver City.

But as a development of a larger body of work took form, and all the difficult preparatory steps and research began to be recognized and rewarded in the appearance of expanded markets - northeast, southeast, midwest, northwest and California - the emphasis has shifted to a more universal design concept - a broader horizon - with the principal focus being in the design development of tiles reflecting architectural and interior design details - integral with the basic architectural concepts rather than simply applied decoration.

David's background in chemistry enabled him to readily make sense of the glaze formulae, but that knowledge didn't preclude the intense experimentation it took to arrive at the point where production could proceed with the confidence that the product would match the intent. There are hundreds of glaze formulae available in books and from other sources, but on testing none of them came out as described, principally because glazes are dependent on a large set of variables - clay, flux, slip, firing temperatures, etc., and exhaustive testing was necessary to establish procedures of consistency.

All glazes need flux to function properly. Lead has demonstrated over many centuries to be the best flux. Next is barium, but both lead and barium are highly toxic and in the interests of both workplace prudence and environmental responsibility, it was decided right at the beginning to use neither.

David wrote a computer application for the glaze formulae, then spent two years in pragmatic testing of hundreds of chips for glazes that could be duplicated each time. Lots of 'sports' appeared, many of them stunning in appearance, but they were accidental and could not be repeated. Lee set up the colors they wanted to develop, and those are what they shot for, eventually meeting with success in both color and in achieving a consistent standard for production.

After intense research and exhaustive lab work, Syzygy was in the happy position of offering an extensive palette of glazes, which have attracted major interest in the industry. A collection of tiles of very true, clear colors, complimented by others specifically designed for subtle variations in coloring, with overglazes providing color modulations and a sensation of surface depth. Intensive continuing research and ongoing experimentation is providing an assurance of the addition of new colors and designs as they are developed and tested.