Sixteen years ago we visited the Baha’i Temple in Haifa, Israel.   I was fascinated by the fact that walkways in the gardens were made out of broken pottery, the technical word for which is “shards.”  A few days later we were in Casaerea and found heaps and heaps of pottery shards.  Here is a link to a photo of the walkways at the Baha’i Temple.

When we got home I put the two ideas above together and had the idea of commercializing the shard pathway.  Of course I never really did anything about it except I started to save broken terra cotta pots.  Last month after 15 years I had Ruben, my assistant this summer, build this small walkway with the shards I had collected.

It looks great. More pictures.

This rainbow sandal illustrates the size of the pieces.  Ruben had to break the pieces up with a hammer to get them to the right size.

Simon takes the credit.

The busines opportunity would be to find the dump next to where a pottery place used to be in Southern California or Northern Mexico.  Mine the shards and sell them to landscape materials yards in 50 lb bags.  Have a website to promote the idea and look for opportunities in the dumps of places like Delft, Lalique and Wedgwood.  I haven’t run the numbers but people will pay big money for things that are tactile, functional, different and rare.