"The secret is not the clay or the stone, but the artistic approach to working…," explained artist and designer Armen Atanyan, showing Mané Tiles' handmade mosaics and tiling, designed by his creative group.

Mané Tiles was established in 2001 by American-Armenian businessman Harutyun Ajaryan with the aim of manufacturing decorative tiles and ceramics for interior and exterior design, using natural Armenian stones and clay.

The company's factory was set up in what was once the Yerevan Automobile Parts Factory, where the iron machinery has been replaced by mounds of clay and baking ovens.  That is where the items are manufactured, but the workshops are where they are created.

The mosaic workshop is where the artists and designers have gathered.

Two incomplete mosaics based on paintings by Martiros Saryan lay on the tables of the workshop.  Two artists were completing the depictions of a hot summer and an Asian tale using tiles of clay, putting them together piece by piece.  Each mosaic is made of tile pieces which have thousands of shades of coloring.

Clay tiles are covered with glaze of different colors, and then a piece of clay of the desired color is cut off using a saw and its sides are shaved until it fits perfectly with the other pieces.  Sometimes, square pieces are used to make a mosaic.  In some paintings rectangular or oblong pieces are cut, for example when the artists' brushstrokes are emphasized or when pieces of clay are used to reproduce fields of wheat bent by the wind.

"Saryan's Kiss was painted using watercolors and each color has a number of shades in it.  At first, we did not know how to make a mosaic with the same transparency and lightness provided by watercolors.  But we found a solution - we painted a tile with different layers of shading and got the effect we wanted," said Gohar Gurzadyan, director of the mosaic group, demonstrating the nuances of their work.

The mind behind the mosaic of Kiss belongs to a filmmaker by profession, Nona Avagyan.  She ended up unexpectedly at Mané Tiles two years ago.  She said that she had never sought work of this kind, but now it was the source of her inspiration, creativity and development.  Over a period of 10 months, she put together a mosaic based on the work The Virgins by the famous artist Gustav Klimt, and the complete product is mind-boggling in its attention to detail and variety of color.  "Every time I finish a piece of work, I like it and am so attached to it that I feel sorry to see it leave the workshop and be sold," said Nona Avagyan, smiling sadly.

Nona's fingers were wrapped in paper - making them look like batteries - as protection from the shaving equipment.  She changes the wrapping a number of times a day, because it wears out quickly.  Her tools include a pencil, forceps and shavers of different kinds.

"When we just started putting mosaics together, we didn't have the necessary tools.  We would prepare the pieces of tile by hand, using a special pair of scissors to cut them and we would use stones to shave the edges, until we would have sores and blisters on our hands," said the director of the mosaic group.

The range of color and patterns on the mosaics, tiles and other products are the forte of another expert, artist Armen Atanyan.

"I don't just create things, I experiment," he said, "Glaze powder is perfect material for artists to experiment with.  In order to get the color I want, I have to mix different kinds of glaze in the right proportion.  Sometimes I get what I want, other times it's something completely new.  There are 30 basic colors, which I can mix together to get about 400 different shades.  Each gram is significant and even a slight change of temperature in the oven can affect the color."

Atanyan makes the prototype of a new product with another worker.  "Before we begin work, I already have a mental picture of the content, look, color and design that the new tile or ceramic piece must have.  I put my idea down on paper.  For example, 'Take glaze of such-and-such color, add 100 grams of water, paint using a brush of such-and-such number, then…' and so on.  So you could say that I write a special recipe for each product," said the artist, showing a file with 600 such recipes.  114 of them were pieces produced on a regular basis.

The company imports glaze from abroad. The technology used to produce it is complicated and secret.  Armenia has never produced glaze.

It is nearly impossible to find two pieces of tile, ceramic or souvenir that are completely alike in the company's showroom.  Instead, one may discover a piece of clay with Armenian cave paintings or flower tiles made with grains of sand, mosaics made based on Gustav Klimt's paintings or an Armenian carpet, made of clay tiles.

Mané Tiles' products are manufactured thanks to the work of people with 20 different professions - geologists, artists, glazers, designers, clay bakers…

The latest discovery by the geologists is rust-colored rock, which they have named just that - rust.  It had never been used in any product before, but now Mané Tiles' experts are trying to process it on their own.  Over 6 years, after many experiments and tests, rocks like marble, onyx, travertine and tuff have been chosen to be used in the products. Only 3 of the 290 types of clay available in Armenia are used.  They have been chosen based on the results of years of testing and are up to international standards - they are durable, safe and waterproof.

Mané Tiles has representatives in the USA and Russia, where 90 percent of their products are exported.  Edik Manukyan, the executive director of the company, said that export volumes had risen five-fold since 2001.

"If we had had uniform consumption, then the appreciation of the dram would have affected us.  But we have seen a rise in consumption, because our recognition in the market has grown.  It would have grown even more if we didn't have certain problems.  We have been forced to raise the prices on some of our products by about 20 percent," explained Manukyan.

Experts in this field said that more manual work on an item raised its price.  One square meter of tile produced by Mané Tiles is priced from US $150-200 to US $3,500-4,000.

Mané Tiles' products are not well known in Armenia.  That is why only 10 percent of their products are sold here, while 90 percent are sent to foreign customers.  But there has been a rise in the level of interest in Armenia over the past few years.  The company will soon open a sales outlet in Yerevan.