Reader question: Is glass tile a trend?
What do you think- are glass tile backsplashes too trendy? Will they be "out of style" in 5 years? What would you do?Vern's right. Sort of. Glass tile is a current trend. So what? Glass tile's a current trend, travertine floors are a current trend, stainless steel appliances are a current trend, granite counters are a current trend, brushed nickel finishes are a current trend, and so is just about any finish you can pick for a project. Timelessness is a myth and trend avoidance is a fool's errand.
Human beings have been making glass because the Bronze Age. At first they made beads, then tile. Glass blowing started out in Syria about 100 BCE and by one hundred CE the Romans were making glass home windows, vases and cups. Human beings have prized glass for heaps of years and have been overlaying partitions with small pieces of it for just as long.
This is a photograph I took in Herculaneum.
That's a pitcher tile mosaic from the year 50 or thereabouts.
Fast forward a couple thousand years and here is a photo I snapped inside the 81st Street Station of the Eighth Avenue line in Manhattan.
That station opened in the 1930s and that tumbler tile is original.
There is nothing trendy about glass as a material, it's as old as civilization itself. In a thousand years, people will still be using glass tile. Tell that to Vern.
Now, simply because something's a classic cloth does not mean that every time it is used it will closing for all time. There's a small window of time throughout which something appears suitable to trend fans and spotters. Then it falls from favor and if no person touches it for long sufficient it may end up a classic. But even then it's now not timeless.
St. Peter's Basilica in Rome isn't timeless, it's High Baroque. The White House isn't timeless, it late Georgian. The Forbidden City isn't timeless, it's Ming. See my point? Those iconic buildings are locked in time and they come to embody the eras in which they were built. Attempting High Baroque or late Georgian today is absurd because it's not 1500 or 1790.
So what the hell does this have to do with whether or not to install a glass tile back splash? Plenty. You are talking about an expense between $500 and $1,000 for most people. You can spend more than that certainly, but I don't think that's what you have in mind. That's not a judgment, just an observation. So knowing that, and knowing that you like glass tile back splashes, I say get a glass tile back splash. If it looks horrible in five years than get rid of it and replace it with whatever's on trend ten years from now.
Everything you purchase for you domestic, and I suggest everything, is subject to the whims of style. It is the very nature of living in a consumerist society. It is not possible to predict what is going to be in fashion five years from now and it is also not possible to expect what you may like then.
All you can understand is what you understand proper now. So buy the nice matters you can find the money for and enjoy them. Right now.
Glass tile photos from Lightstreams Glass Tile.