INSPIRATION
By Lenore Eisner

A PLACE FOR TILES - In Residences and Art

Tiles create memories of home: A permanent place where generations can associate their childhood dreams with the reflective brilliant surface patterns of ceramic tile and their geometric placement. I promote tiles as good for the very human soul because they combine science and art with the rich minerals of clay and colorants from mother earth, subjected to fire. Fortunate are those individuals who can recall the ceramics and richly tiled rooms and fountains, long after they’ve grown. Clients have sometimes asked me to recreate such tiled spaces. We do extensive research on old techniques for glazing, application and design.

The Orientalist painters, Rudolph Ernst and Jean-Leon Gerome painted richly-patterned tiles they had seen during travels in the North African Coast, Egypt, Turkey, Syria and Israel, in architectural embellishments and utilized them as background motifs in many of their paintings. Several artists of this period, 1820s -1930s, known as “The Orientalists,” inspired me to promote the layered use of rich, ornately-patterned, glazed wall tile for homes today, based on the exquisitely tiled walls, columns and floors, which is seen in their paintings and preserved from the illustrated past.

Trained classically as a painter, Rudolph Ernst was so taken with the art of the colorful tiles he’d seen in Constantinople, he later learned faience tile painting upon his return to Paris. The French painter, Matisse, was influenced by Orientalism, for he also used decorative tiles (and fabrics) as backgrounds in his paintings, against languishing human figures.

Below are a few paintings which, perhaps, only a tile lover or interior architect would note for the generous pattern details shown in the backgrounds… The artists’ choice of painting the tiles amplifies the pictures’ subjects. The painters, whose work is shown here, would, without a doubt, have made great interior designers, today. We can translate these palatial and foreign interiors into contemporary spaces to make brilliantly tiled wainscots, intricately patterned floor to ceiling bathrooms and even harems, if one cares to do so… Tiled rooms are easy to maintain - simply walk into the space and literally hose it down, floor to ceiling.

Orientalist paintings depict the culture and lore of a more harmonious Middle East of the 19th Century seen through the artists’ eyes. The romantic subject matter these artists chose to paint reflects those times. Bejeweled dark-skinned slaves, robed Koranic and possibly Talmudic scholars, craftspeople and non-resistant women in harems seem to be accepted and romanticized.

Five Paintings showing tiles follow: by Raphael Ernst (Austrian), and Jean-Leon Gerome (French)