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The Portuguese Tiles
Mai
The Venturous entered the Alcazar at Seville, and immediately look around to the walls, which shined at candle light. His marveled face expressed the profoundest admiration for what he saw. Isabel, at his side touched his arm, asking “my spouse?”. “What are these wonders?” he asked “which shined as if touched by the sun?”. She smiled and answered “they’re tiles my spouse”. “What?” “It’s tiles”.
The Venturous, drunken by what he saw decided to take this image and cover his own palace with this sunshine. He called the greatest artisans whom, by the wealth at his disposal, coming from the four corners of the planet, expanded the craftsmanship far beyond the original Arabic artisans could, developing a Portuguese feature that everyone remembers as our own. “they’re tiles my spouse”.
D. Manuel I introduce in Portugal the tiling art which, with time became a telling story way, that tells our own story, becoming the iconography of being Portuguese. From patterns, to tones, to the cyclic blue tile, with stripes, no stripes, imaged, expression, checkered, the art developed and stayed, though original from Northern Africa, associated with Portugal. With the Baroque, tiling assumes it’s greatest expression in Portuguese culture, dressing rooms, salons, kitchens, the whole space, replacing painting, fresco’s, and all forms of graphic expression in Architecture. Throughout the years tiling gained multiple expressions in our culture, since it’s prime objective (surfacing architectonic expressions), to a graphic disclosure purpose (with commemorative and theme sceneries regarding the culture inheritance of the place), to finally, a cultural disclosure purpose.
The Portuguese tiles have gained a remarked position as a form of identity spread, promoting, besides it’s original purpose, themes and images evocative of the Portuguese history, our identity, our being. It is today a promoted object and theme, to preserve, purpose of a series of initiatives evocative of “being Portuguese” that, by our history, and it’s North African origins that are now Portuguese, integrated in our identity as a 800 year old Nation. 1501.
D. Manuel I, the Venturous entered the Villa Palace, holding arms with Maria de Aragão and Castille, his wife, Isabel’s sister, and looked around, reminding the Alcazar at Seville, and the phrase “They’re tiles my spouse”. Proud, took four steps and looked all around saying: “I have the sun at home”, smiling as a child. That man, with a newly discovered world in his hand reminded from the sphere in his imagery, smiled as a child with a new toy.
