Useful rooms deserve beauty, too.
The point here is not to make making look picturesque. It is to give daily work a room with its own rhythm: hard-wearing underfoot, generous at the table, calm at the walls.
Fired tile has the right kind of irregularity for this. It takes sunlight differently from one square to the next, and it makes a useful surface feel like a field. Ash wood and plaster leave enough air around the things being made.
Terracotta is porous, so a workroom floor like this one needs a good seal and a little upkeep. The terracotta guide covers both.
“The most practical room can still have a horizon.”