| Home | About | Contact | Site Map | Links | Library |
Unique Home Furniture, Home Decorating and Home Decoration Store
Lush Blue Tiles:
Colour is king in this bright and welcoming kitchen. Orange walls, deep honey-coloured pine units and lush blue tiles look stunning together and give this room a show-stopping personality.These big, rustic-looking blue tiles suit this room beautifully. A mix of dark and light tiles have been used to add a bit of interest and their surfaces are nicely uneven - a rustic plus point. Using tiles as a work-surface has many advantages. They're heat resistant, easy to lay and good for chopping on. Remember, though, that white grout can get dirty easily and tiles may crack if you bang heavy pans down on them.
Two other special heritages of Portugal have a sure appeal for us, her tiles and her great libraries. I love the blue glazed tiles that adorn so many city houses and country villas, and also interior church walls and the corridors and stairway walls of civic buildings. The word for them is azulejos, and this is said to be an Arabic word meaning smooth, though visitors often wrongly assume that it is connected with azul, meaning blue. This whole feature is a Moorish heritage, but it must also have some sort of affinity with Holland for some Portuguese dictionaries translate the word as "Dutch tiles," and in the beach resort of Figueira da Foz there's a surprise collection of real Dutch tiles said to be equaled in number and value nowhere in Holland itself.
.
