Sarasota John Ringling mansion Ca d'Zan
— a Venetian palace on the Gulf.
Not only on a wall.
Sarasota John Ringling mansion Ca d'Zan, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Ca d'Zan is the winter house John and Mable Ringling built on Sarasota Bay in the mid-1920s, while John ran the circus. The architect was Dwight James Baum of New York; the model was a Venetian gothic palazzo. Thirty-six thousand square feet, fifty-six rooms, terra-cotta and polychrome tile across the bay-front terrace. Mable died in 1929. John kept the house until his death in 1936 and left it, with the art collection, to the State of Florida. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Ca d'Zan stands on Sarasota Bay just north of downtown Sarasota, on the sixty-six-acre estate that John and Mable Ringling assembled in the early 1920s. The estate today comprises the mansion, the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the Circus Museum, and the historic Asolo Theater. Architect Dwight James Baum of Riverdale, New York, modelled the house on the Venetian gothic palazzi the Ringlings collected on their European buying trips. Construction ran from 1924 to 1926. Bequeathed to the state in 1936, the property is administered today by Florida State University.
The exterior is a layered composition of terra-cotta blocks, polychrome tile, Italian marble, and pink Mexican stone, set around a central two-story Court that opens to the bay through arched loggias. The bayfront terrace, paved in coloured marble, runs more than two hundred feet along the water. The eighty-foot belvedere tower at the north corner was modelled on the campanile at Saint Mark's Square in Venice. Owen Burns, the Sarasota contractor, sourced the terra-cotta from the Heinz family's Pennsylvania works.
The Ringling estate is open daily except Thanksgiving and Christmas. General admission to the grounds and art museum is sold by The Ringling, which operates the property under Florida State University. Ca d'Zan itself is toured separately, with timed entry, and the upper-floor tour requires a guided ticket. The bayfront lawn and the Ca d'Zan terrace remain free to the public after museum hours. The estate sits on US-41 at University Parkway, roughly four miles north of downtown Sarasota, on the bayfront.
