It started on a milk route.

In the late 1950s, Arto Alajian left Heliopolis, Egypt. He came by way of Beirut, then New York, then Houston, and landed in Venice, California. He had grown up in his father's factory in Egypt, where he learned to design shoes. Tile would come later.

He worked nights as a mechanic on airplanes while he studied. He sold ice cream during the day. Then he ran the milk route for Adohr Farms, house to house, restaurant to restaurant, every morning across Venice and the neighborhoods around it.

In those years, he met Irene Birkenbreiter. She was a muralist. He started making thin brick veneers in clay to frame her murals, the brick going around the artwork as a finished border. The frames found their own audience. He started showing them along his milk route, selling them to the restaurants and homes he was already visiting, and coming back later to install them himself.

By 1966, the brick had outpaced the milk. ARTO became a company. The hard date is 1966. The work had been quietly underway for years before that.

Today, ARTO is a materials works.

We make handcrafted tile, brick, and pavers in clay and concrete. We add value to natural stone, finishing and detailing raw material into ARTO pieces. We curate porcelain that meets our standard. The plan, in time, is to make all of it ourselves.

Think stone works. Iron works. ARTO is a works in that tradition. One design language, one standard of craft, every material under one roof.

ConcreteWorks. ClayWorks. StoneWorks. GlassWorks. MetalWorks. MosaicWorks. A family of studios under the same roof, on the way over time. The long-term aspiration is simple: build the world's most sought-after hard surfaces works. We are not in a rush. We are building it the way we build everything. By hand, in the right order, until it is right.

This is not a tile company that also sells brick. This is a materials house with a maker's soul.

Color you can feel. Texture you can see.

Our work doesn't disappear into a wall.

Clay tile comes out of the kiln in unrepeatable variations, flashed, layered, warmed by fire. Concrete pieces hold their color and texture without ever seeing a flame. Stone we treat by hand to bring out what's already there. Porcelain we curate carefully, only the pieces that earn a place next to everything else.

Different media, one standard. Surfaces hold tool marks, edge softness, the small honest evidence of a hand. No two pieces are exactly alike, and that's the point.

We call this Rustic Elegance. The dichotomy is the material truth. Rough and refined at the same time. An uneven handmade edge paired with a glaze that catches light. Surface texture you can feel with your eyes closed, in colors that belong in a gallery.

Far from perfect, and that's the beauty.

Custom didn't start as a department.

We have a custom department now. We didn't start with one.

In the early years, custom was just what we did. Answer the phone, listen to what someone needed, figure it out. A designer couldn't find a color, so we mixed it. A homeowner brought us a chip of tile from a 1920s bungalow they were trying to honor, so we matched it. An architect needed a hand-painted mural for a hotel lobby, so we painted it. Sixty years later, the spirit hasn't changed. There's just a team and a workflow behind it.

Custom glazes, custom shapes, custom hand-painted designs, color matching, historical restoration, pieces that have never existed before today. Bring us a photograph, a sketch, a story, and we figure it out.

Hard surfaces are notoriously hard to customize. Most tile, brick, and paver companies sell from a fixed catalog. We've never worked that way.

Designed and handcrafted in Southern California.

We make tile in Los Angeles. Most of the tile sold in America doesn't. In the handcrafted, handmade end of the category, what we do, the number made here is smaller still.

How do we manage it? Honestly, we are not entirely sure. We compete against products made in countries with different employment standards, different environmental rules, different cost structures. The math shouldn't work. It works because the people in this factory have been doing this work for a long time, and because what comes out of it is something people want.

When designers and architects walk through the factory, the most common reaction is surprise. That something like this is still being built here. We are surprised it isn't more common.

Our concrete pavers and tile, the Artillo and Roman collections, are cast and finished here. Our clay tile is hand-pressed and fired here. Custom glazes are mixed here, custom murals are painted here. Every piece passes through the hands of someone who knows the work.

Making in America means we control the kiln, the clay body, the glaze chemistry, the timing of every production run. A custom request can move from sketch to sample in days, not months. Our quality isn't decided by a shipping container.

We plan to grow this. More US manufacturing is in the works.

Our hearts are in our hands.

Craft, with the rigor behind it.

In imported porcelain, this kind of rigor exists. It is standard, and it is getting better. In our category, handcrafted ceramic, concrete, brick, and stone, it almost never does. Most of the handcrafted world sells beauty without the technical paperwork to back it up.

ARTO is a member of the Tile Council of North America, the National Tile Contractors Association, and the Ceramic Tile Distributors Association. We publish Environmental Product Declarations and Health Product Declarations across our concrete, ceramic, and glazed brick lines. We provide full CSI 3-part specifications, comprehensive installation sheets, and LEED-eligible documentation for projects that need it.

We like being part of the full industry. The labor, the manufacturing, the distribution, the people who specify the work and the people who install it. The factory floor is part of that story too. It is where the product is made, and it is where the story stays honest.

A family business, still.

ARTO is run today by Arto Alajian's two sons, Armen and Vod Alajian, alongside more than 80 people who handcraft this product every day. Same family. Same building. Same standard since 1966.

We are still a company you can call. The phone rings to a person who knows the product. The factory floor is open to anyone serious enough to come see it. Just call first. We are a working factory, not an exhibit, and the kiln keeps its own schedule.

You are the star of the show.

For sixty years, our line has been:

We make cool shit for cool people making cool places.

That sentence starts with us. It's how we used to think. We've come to believe the truer line is:

Cool people work with ARTO to build cool places.

That one starts with you.

It's human nature for a founder to want to be the star. His sons too. The honest truth is humbler. ARTO is a box of color and texture. The person shaping the space picks from the box and makes the place. The project is the star. We serve the customer. The customer serves the dream of the owner of the project.

That project could be a home, a restaurant, a school, a hotel, a chapel, a courtyard, a public square. The dream belongs to whoever is building the place. Around them, an ecosystem of cool people brings the dream to life, and ARTO is built to serve every layer of it.

• Homeowners and property owners are cool people. You are building a place for the people you love or the people you serve. A kitchen for your family, a patio for your friends, a hotel for your guests, a restaurant for your customers, a courtyard for students. The dream starts with you. Order samples and put them in your hands.

• Designers and architects are cool people. You translate the dream into a plan. You walk homeowners and property owners through hundreds of decisions and help them figure out what they actually want. We make the materials, and we make custom answers when the catalog runs out, so you can give your clients something nobody else can. Request specs, order trade samples, call us when something needs to be made.

• Dealers are cool people. You are the people in the room when a customer walks in not knowing what they need. You bring local knowledge, real-world experience, and an eye for what works in your market and what doesn't. We support you with samples, displays, training, and the catalog depth to be the answer for almost anyone who walks through the door. Become a dealer.

• Contractors and installers are cool people. The project is the star, and you decide whether it gets there. A great contractor can take a gold bar and make it look like shit, or take shit and make it look like gold. Same materials, different hands, different result. A project designed and installed properly should last 50 to 100 years. That bar is yours to hit. We give you the installation guides, technical sheets, and responsive support to hit it.

You're the cool people. The place is yours. We make the material.