The aluminum backing is the product
Most of the medallions here are described as aluminum backed, and that backing is doing the work that used to take a stonemason. The individual pieces are cut, laid into the pattern and bonded to a sheet, so the assembly holds its geometry while it is handled and set.
Without it a 48 inch inlay would be a hundred loose pieces and a template. With it the inlay is one object with one thickness, which is why a medallion can drop into a field of plain tile at all. The marble tile page covers what a medallion is and how its size is written.
Two kinds of medallion on one page
The larger group runs 24, 36, 48, 60 and 72 inches and these are floor centerpieces: a hallway, an entry, the middle of a room, sized against the space and not against a tile.
The smaller group sits at 3x4, 3x5 and 4x6, and those are inserts. An insert goes into a field as a repeated accent or into a border, so it is closer to a decorative tile than to a centerpiece, and it is sized against the tile around it.
Why every medallion is multi finish
The finish field says multi finish on the whole range without exception, which is unusual and is not a filing shortcut. A medallion is built from several stones, and the finish is part of how the pattern separates one stone from the next.
A polished piece next to a honed one reads as two materials even where the color is close, so the finish is carrying contrast that color alone would not supply. A medallion ground to a single uniform finish would lose most of its drawing.
Round medallions and the cut around them
Round is the shape this range is built on, and square, rectangular and oval fill in after it. A round medallion is the traditional form and it is also the one that asks the most of the floor around it.
A circle set into a square grid leaves four curved gaps, so the tile around a round medallion has to be cut to the curve, and the field pattern meets the inlay at an angle that changes all the way round. A square medallion at 36x36 or 48x48 lands on the grid instead, which is the quieter arrangement and the reason the square group exists.
The pattern names are the catalog
There are more than thirty named designs here: Imperial, North Star, Marcus, Primavera, Rafael, Neptune, Prosperity, Grace, Diana, Vienna, Davinci, Lucerne, Casablanca, Milan Black and a long list after them.
The name is the only reliable way to find a particular one again, because two medallions at the same diameter in the same stones can be completely different drawings. Where a floor is being matched to something that already exists, the design name is the thing to record.
Sizing a medallion against the room
A medallion works when the field around it reads as a border rather than as a leftover. A 48 inch inlay in a six foot hallway leaves a foot of tile on each side, which reads as a frame; the same inlay in a four foot hallway leaves almost nothing and the geometry fights the walls.
That is why the size list runs in even steps from 24 up to 72 inches. The figure is the diameter on a round piece and the side on a square one, so it can be measured directly against the space it is going into.
Thickness and the field tile
The range sits at 3/8 and 1/2 inch, which is the same band the field tile occupies, and that is deliberate: an inlay and the tile around it have to finish level.
It is the figure to check while the field tile is still a decision, because a medallion is the last thing anybody wants to be adjusting. Marble tile is the field, and black and white tile the patterned floors a medallion often sits in the middle of.
