Terracotta tile had been in vogue in the decades before Turner set to work on his home, but around 1895 tastes started to change and the architectural features went out of fashion, leaving Ontario producers with stockpiles of unsold and aging pieces. The terracotta tiled house on 20 Jerome Street is covered with a range of tiles and clay forms that he acquired on the cheap (most was free). According to _Terra Cotta-Artful Deceivers_, a book published by the Toronto Region Architectural Conservancy, Turner’s elaborate exterior may have been a way of advertising his construction business but “the display seems not to have had the desired effect,” it says, somewhat ominously. The book calls Turner’s eccentric design a “misuse” of the sudden excess of tile, but I love the eccentricity and sheer excess. [Via.](http://www.blogto.com/city/2014/03/why_is_this_west_bend_home_covered_in_terracotta_tiles/)