How the pattern is set out
Two rectangles are laid side by side to make a square. The next square along has its pair turned ninety degrees, and the alternation continues in both directions, so each block appears to pass over the one beside it and under the one above.
It needs a piece twice as long as it is wide, since that is the only proportion at which two side by side produce a true square. In some versions a small square or a round dot sits at the corners where four blocks meet, and that is the variant most people picture when they hear the name.
Where basket weave came from
The idea is old enough to appear in Roman floor work, but the version in bathrooms is Victorian and Edwardian. Small white marble and ceramic tile was specified for the same reasons subway tile was: it wiped clean, it made the most of the light, and small pieces followed a floor that was rarely flat.
Basket weave and hexagon were the two figures that pattern could be had in, which is why period houses have one or the other and almost nothing else.
The stones in this range
Beige leads, with white and green behind it, on honed and polished faces in 12x12 sheets at 3/8 inch. The series include a Jerusalem limestone alongside the marbles.
Limestone in this pattern behaves differently from marble. It has no veining to speak of, so the weave reads as pure geometry, where a veined marble adds a second pattern running across the first.
Why basket weave suits a small floor
A large pattern in a small room fights it. Basket weave has a repeat only a few inches across, so a powder room floor holds dozens of complete blocks and the figure reads whole even in a space the size of a doormat.
The same property makes it forgiving at the edges. Where a large format has to be cut through its pattern at every wall, a basket weave sheet is cut between pieces and the loss is barely visible.
Basket weave and hexagon
The two period patterns answer a room differently. A hexagon has no direction at all, so it reads as an even field and a small hexagon floor looks like a texture. A basket weave has two directions alternating, so the eye keeps finding the rhythm and the floor reads as a made object.
That is the practical choice between them. Where a floor should sit quietly under everything else in the room, the hexagon is the calmer one. Where the floor is meant to be noticed and there is nothing else in a small bathroom to do that job, the weave carries it on its own.
Where basket weave goes
A bathroom floor first, then a powder room, a shower floor, a border inside a plain field and a backsplash where a period kitchen wants something other than a grid.
Marble mosaics holds the rest of the stone sheets, limestone tile the other material here, and mosaic tile the full range.
