BottleStone is the invention of Paul Burns and Robert Kirby. Paul is the owner of Fireclay Tile (www.fireclaytile.com) in San Jose, California. He’s been involved in ceramics and the tile business for nearly 30 years. He has owned and operated Fireclay Tile for over twenty years. He loves ceramics, and is constantly experimenting with larger ceramic form factors and also the use of various materials – especially waste and recycled materials.

Paul began experimenting with the use of post-consumer recycled glass along with post-industrial granite waste dust to make his tiles several years ago. Now most of the tiles that he makes at Fireclay are comprised of over 50% recycled materials.

Bob Kirby is an engineer and consultant that has been experimenting with and developing the use of recycled glass as a building material for over nineteen years.

BottleStone came out of the collaboration between Paul and Bob. It is the extremely unique combination of clay, cement and glass technologies with a pending patent. The end result is an amazing ceramic product with incredible strength, sizes, colors, and versatility.

The response to BottleStone has been so tremendous, and its potential so broad, that we decided to create a separate corporation in order to produce BottleStone in high volumes through national and international distribution and as multiple and varied products. We also decided that this type of corporation required some dedicated management and Michael Looney came in to the company after a career in high technology where he had experience in starting new companies as well as scaling existing product lines. Mike has been a customer of Paul’s at Fireclay Tile for years and when Paul showed him a sample, he was immediately taken with its aesthetics and its potential as a green building material. Mike holds the role of President and CEO and will see to the financial, market and staffing development of the corporation.

We’re passionate about this product. We have not seen anything else like it. No other ceramic product is as large. It can replace natural stone and cast concrete – both of which have a large CO2 footprint. It has all sorts of potential – from flooring to passive-solar building cladding, as a permeable landscaping tile, as outdoor patio furniture – the list goes on. And, we’re not aware of a stone-like slab product that is as eco-friendly when considering all of the aspects relative to the material, its additives, its manufacturing process, related transportation, etc.

While we wait for needed funding for expansion, a dedicated kiln and distribution resources, Fireclay Tile will continue to manage the production and sales of BottleStone.

Welcome to BottleStone.