Tiles (azulejos)

Tiles are commonly used to decorate buildings of all sorts in Portugal., inside and out My favourites are those using geometrical patterns. These can be made up of individual mosaic-type pieces, such as those using Moorish designs and imported from Seville in the C16th. These are from the old cathedral in Coimbra.

And these, also C16th, are from the (excellent but crowded) Lisbon tile museum, Museu Nacional do Azulejo www.museudoazulejo.gov.pt

Or, more commonly for Portuguese tiles, they are painted with designs and repeated in such a way to make a pattern as in these from the wall of the Capela de São Miguel at the University of Coimbra.

Or these from the Lisbon museum which were made in 1970 using 1910 designs.

I also like so-called “pedagogic” tiles from C18th such as this one displayed in the Coimbra Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro http://www.museumachadocastro.gov.pt/en-GB/default.aspx
Fig 14 was intended to teach mathematical definition 31 from Book 1 of such definitions (Coimbra 1700-1750) which is “A rectangle is a quadrilateral figure consisting of four right angles, which are thus equal, irrespective of whether the sides are”.

Another example, from the Lisbon museum, shows the geometrical schema of a pyramid.

Biblical scenes painted onto tiles are often be seen in churches, but I was taken with this bizarre C17th secular (satirical even?) story under the title “The Chicken’s Wedding”, from the Lisbon museum.