-----In 2004 we bought a falling-down house and 30 acres. This blog documents our progress-----

Sunday, February 27, 2011

tile inspiration from Seville

We spent a few days last week exploring Seville.  It's one of those places I had been meaning to go for years just never got round to - but very glad we did as it's been my favourite place in all of Spain so far.

As is usual when I travel these days, I'm always looking out for ideas for things we could do at Amherst and Seville didn't disappoint.

I've always loved tiles and in Seville they were everywhere.  It was common for buildings to have little tile panels as decoration, they were on the walls, underneath balconies...

seville streets - 07 triana - 11 plaza de cuba buildings

They were on the floor...

real alcazer - inside - 06 real alcazer - inside - 02

They were used on stairs, at the edge of ponds... and even on garden paths as flowerbed edging

real alcazer - courtyards - 14 real alcazer - courtyards - 03

But my favourite of all, they were used to make benches...

museo de artes y costumbres populares - 25 real alcazer - courtyards - 19

We were pretty limited in terms of our baggage allowance in what we could bring back, but we did manage to scout out a tile shop - Ceramica Santa Ana, in Triana - and buy enough to do the edging on two small benches at Amherst.  Here's the shop:

triana - 14 ceramic santa ana triana - 15 ceramic santa ana

and here are the tiles we bought - we got 12 of the curved edge tiles, and 10 of the bigger ones:

tiles from seville

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