History of Tile I: The Primordial Designer

by | Jul 10, 2018 | Design

 

Tile is an element that can get lost in a design, usually having the thankless job of bathroom flooring or a kitchen backsplash.  But these thankless jobs are the cornerstone of civilization.  After fire and along with the wheel, ceramic tile making is one of the world’s most ancient crafts.  An invention that is not only practical, but also that has come to be seen as an art form.

Ceramic tiles, quite simply put, are made in a lengthy and involved process of refinement and baking of clay and other Earth-born materials.  Tile falls within the family of plastic arts, which includes brick, terra cotta, stucco/plaster, adobe, and cement.  However, only tile and it’s close relative brick are duplicitous in nature: their use as building materials does not diminish their claim to rank as a decorative art.
For us far-westerners, our first instinct would be wood as the prime building block for houses, roads, and other structures.  But one must remember that wood doesn’t exist everywhere.  Aside from temperate climates that foster the growth of strong, hardwood trees, the rest of the world needed other building blocks.

This is where I find great beauty in tile making: it is created from the Earth.  That is why many ancient civilizations, including those of the Mesopotamian era of 6000 BC, chose this material to not only build their houses but to decorate them as well.  And through history, up until the tile boom in the US during the early 20th century, tile has been a staple of building.

In this series, we will be looking at several civilizations that used ceramics and ceramic tile in their building.  While, we will try and keep each post brief yet filled with some fun information, we hope that once you do make the choice to buy some ceramics, you will leave with a knowledge of all the different variants of this art form that could make your home a personal masterpiece.

 

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