Tiles, regarded as the simplest form of ceramic art, have been a part of human life for thousands of years. As with so many things, they were first produced by the Ancient Egyptians, in 4,000 BC. Following their lead, the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Islamic Empire all went on to produce tiles themselves. In places like Tunisia and Iran, you can still witness examples of early tiles. If you visit Middle-Eastern mosques dating from the 12th century onwards, many of them display Koranic scripts using vibrantly-coloured relief tiles.

In Western Europe, the oldest known tiles were produced in the 10th century. In England, examples have been found in several locations. Elsewhere in Europe, many churches were paved with hand-painted tiles in the 13th and 14th centuries.

Moorish tile-making spread steadily northwards through Spain from the 16th century onwards. The Alhambra Palace in Granada and the Great Mosque in Cordoba house some of the most impressive examples. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, Holland was the main producer of tiles. Britain took their place in the 19th century, becoming the first country to start mass-producing tiles.

The scale of English tile-making grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, reached its peak in the late 19th century and then faded away somewhat thereafter. American tile-makers also enjoyed a degree of prosperity, but they had stiff competition from English imports. The Arts & Crafts movement, which was influential up until the 1930s, revived the handcraft of tile-making, making tiles a popular choice for fireplace surrounds and wall decoration.

Today’s digital technology means that tiles can be custom-printed with any image at all. This opens up some amazing possibilities for their use in murals as well as in a range of domestic and commercial surroundings. Genuine ceramic colours are used in the digital printing process, which means you always get the unique palette and distinctive surface finish that makes ceramic tiles so special. As nanoengineering becomes more sophisticated, we can probably even look forward to three-dimensional ceramic tiles produced using digital techniques in the coming years.

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