Azulejos

In southern Spain and Portugal there are tiles everywhere, called Azulejos.  There are tiles inside and outside of buildings.

These tiles share a quality with quilts in that the individual squares have beauty, and that beauty is amplified through repetition as larger patterns are created.  As in quilts, beauty also  comes from the irregularities. There is beauty in the broken tiles, the mismatched repairs and the sliding brushstrokes. Here are tiles from Lisbon, the Alentejo, Seville and Granada.

Some of the tiles are dimensional. 

And some (like quilts) give the illusion of dimensionality through light and dark.

Some are geometric.

 

And some are narrative.

Some show the passage of time.

The connection to quilts seem implicit. I hope to design some fabric to make it explicit. Please join me for some imaginary mint tea in this courtyard to think about it.