Tiles

Tiles are made from ceramics for instance and have been known since ancient Egypt. The Egyptians, the Syrians and the Persians covered the walls of their temples with kiln baked bricks / tiles, embellished with beautiful compositions of colour. In Spain for instance, the Iberian people already had knowledge of ceramic tiles. And when the Romans concurred the Iberian Peninsula the development did not stop. But the tile as we know it nowadays has been created and developed by the Arabs, which can be seen in the palaces and homes they left behind.

With the rule of the Almohaden in Spain in the 12th and 13th century, there was a revival of the production of tiles. The word for wall tile, azulejos, comes from the Arabic al zuleycha, which means; glazed brick / tile. Madrid, Seville and Triana in particular became the trading centres. The green tiles and mosaics from the Golden Tower originate from the first primitive wall tile bakery, built around the year 1200. There are three methods of producing tiles; the flat wall tiles, the hollow tiles and the tiles with dried rope. These different variants still exist.

When Andalusia was concurred by Castile, the formation of the guilds was written down. The traditional guilds from the Middle Ages were further developed for the benefit of all workshops from that time where tiles were produced. For instance in Seville, where after the conquest by Ferdinand III he issued a number of orders in which made it compulsory for each guild to be settled in a street with its own name: in this case the ceramists that produced the tiles, were part of the pottery guild. The pottery guild became very important in the 14th and 15th centuries. In documents from that time it was mentioned that this guild had its own hospital in Seville for the treatment of the ill in this profession. Apart from Triana there are other important production centres for tiles in Southern Europe in the 14th and 15th centuries. Toleda Manises (Valencia) and Muel (Zaragoza), with a deep-rooted production of glazed tiles in Toledo and Triana in the 15th century. Nowadays tiles are manufactured all over the world. Ceramic tiles are even used in space travel.

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