The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: November seventh, appreciating a singular sense of style.

Numerous great and quirky minds have revealed themselves in the homes they've built. Fonthill, in the Bucks County dales near Doylestown in Pennsylvania's southeast corner, is one such place. It's the vision of Henry Chapman Mercer, Harvard- trained archaeologist, museum curator, champion of the Arts and Crafts movement, founder of Moravian Tile Works, and man of many interests and aesthetics.

In 1908, four years after his decorative tiles won grand prize in the St. Louis World's Fair, Mercer began to build a home to accommodate his sense of style. Actually, sculpt would be a more accurate description of the process. Working without firm blueprints but with many bags of cement, he created a 44-room, concrete confection, a dizzying, Escher-like array of curving corridors, swirling staircases and columned archways. Not only are no two rooms in Fonthill alike, neither are any of its many columns. Mercer's explanation: every tree in a forest is unique. Plain concrete walls are lavishly inset with tiles of Mercer's design and hung with 900 prints. Some are illustrative as well as decorative. Tiles in the library, for example, depict the discovery and exploration of the New World.

Doylestown has two other Mercer monuments. He built the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works adjacent to Fonthill to meet demand for his designs. Ceramists still produce 100,00 tiles a year, using Mercer's techniques and patterns. Mercer Museum in Doylestown displays his wildly eclectic, attic- like collection of early American tools and artifacts. All offer insights into the mind of a man whose life's motto was "Plus Ultra", Latin for "more beyond."

For information on Fonthill and Doylestown's Mercer Mile, call 215-345-0210 or www.mercermuseum.org

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