Hand-Painted Glazed Tiles: The Colors of Southern Italy

A wall or floor paved with hand-painted tiles from Southern Italy. The tiles are twenty-centimeter square handmade terracotta, with a thick, glossy glaze in saturated cobalt blue, lemon yellow, ochre orange, and white. The patterns are hand-painted—lemons, vines, geometric borders, or simplified animals—with visible brushstrokes and traces of glaze flow. The pattern placement on each tile is slightly offset, and the color depth varies. When multiple tiles are joined, the patterns sometimes form a continuous large composition, and sometimes remain independent. The edges of the tiles are not perfectly straight, so the joint width varies. Paired with white stucco walls and wooden countertops. Avoid: using machine-printed uniform tiles, making every tile identical, using low-saturation colors, making the joints wide and deep.

Translated from Chinese by AI.

一面以南義手繪磁磚鋪成的牆或地坪。磚是二十公分見方的手工陶磚,釉面厚而有光,顏色是飽和的鈷藍、檸檬黃、赭橘與白。圖案是手繪的——檸檬、藤蔓、幾何邊飾或簡化的動物,筆觸可以看見畫筆的方向與釉料流動的痕跡,每一塊的圖案位置略有偏移,顏色深淺不一。多塊磚拼在一起時,圖案有時連續成大幅的構圖,有時各自獨立。磚的邊緣不完全平直,接縫的寬度因此有變化。搭配白色的灰泥牆與木質檯面。避免:使用機器印刷的均勻磁磚、讓每塊磚完全相同、使用低彩度的顏色、把接縫做得寬而深。