Tiles

My family laugh at me… well, they are amused by me because I love tiles. I don’t continually re-tile our bathroom or kitchen, I’m quite happy with the lovely white Spanish tiles with bluey-greeny mosaic insets in the bathroom, and earthy coloured tiles in the kitchen. Whenever I’m out and about and I spot some lovely tiles, I just have to spend a few moments admiring them, even photographing them. There is something about the patterns, or the colour, or the glaze which attracts me. I like repetitive geometric designs, although I also love  random idiosyncratic arrangements. My musical taste includes Michael Nyman who is the master of the repetitive refrains with discordant slashes of sound, and Bach’s work with its driving rhythms and exciting build-ups… (build-ups? builds-up?) I have little knowledge of the technical terms in music, as you can tell!

Tiles have been around for thousands of years and can be made of a variety of materials, including clay, slate, glass, stone, and are used in flooring, on walls, on roofs and can be decorated in a variety of ways. They have different purposes, the original one of course was practiacl, but now they oare often decorative as well, and sometimes, just there to be decorative! I like tiled roofs, I like tiled walls, I like tiled floors, I just like tiles!

Ok, I know it’s a mosaic, but the tesserae are tiny tiles, aren’t they?

Do you see my kitchen tiles?Roof tilesBathroom tiles… not mine but in my splendid bathroom in the Midland Hotel