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Tiles, in their earliest form as a decorative artwork, date back over 3000 years – to the glazed brickwork found in the Elamite Temple at Chogha Zanbil. A particularly beautiful example of hand-painted, relief brick tiling can be found in the Achamaenid decoration of Persepolis.

Over the course of history, the methods used for designing and creating tiles have developed so as to allow the production of ever more colourful and intricate patterns that dazzle with their capacity for tessellated detail.

Another particularly striking specimen is the bright – almost neon – complexity on display in the facade of Jerusalem’s mid-16th Century Dome of the Rock.

The 1850s presented the first evidence of a technique traced back to Catalonia, a method which involved using hydraulic pressure as a means of finishing the tiles rather than heating them over a flame. The resulting product became known as an encaustic cement tile, and their manufacture is shown in the video below.

 

Kolory Maroka: How encaustic cement tiles are made

An ingenious, centuries-old method for making beautiful tiles.

Posted by Residential Land on Monday, 22 May 2017

 

This method involves a high level of control over the detailing within tiles. A cement tile mould would be created based on a drawn pattern, and the mould would then be used in the creation of each individually hand-made tile.

The mould allows for each segment to be formed of a different colour mixture (comprised of cement, marble powder, fine sand, and natural mineral colour pigments), with the manufacturer having to carefully pour the relevant colour into each section as appropriate.

A layer of mortar is then added, made of fine sand and cement, to provide a buffer that will reinforce the patterned layer of colour in the face of intense hydraulic pressure. Then, a third layer of porous cement is added of the necessary thickness for impact strength pre- and post-installation.

Finally the tile is placed in a hydraulic press and subjected to the necessary pressure to affix the detailed layer of patterned colour to the thicker cement layers beneath.