mixing and playing with tiles
The main kitchen is ordered and will be ready in about two months - just in time for our summer holidays. Now, the next step is to decide on tiles for the kitchen walls. The kitchen is modern and open to the living area. But since our over 200 year old house is located in the South of Italy in the historic center of a pittoresque fisher village, we should add some mediterranean atmosphere to the modern kitchen moduls.
Something unique that you would never find in another place, something that you would look forward to see in your seaside home. Colourful tiles from Vietri (near Salerno) or from Sicily - yes! But how could we decide on one design or one colour? They are all so beautiful!
This is when I remembered the beautiful effect of mixing antique ceramic tiles.
Here my favorties samples:
wild mix of antique tiles in the kitchen of Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce (D&G) in Portofino
mix of antique Vietri tiles by Antica Ceramica in the kitchen of Villa Thun in Capri
more antique ceramic tiles outside Villa Thun, Capri via Elle Decor
kitchen and dining area of same Positano Villa
(geometric effects and patterns stand ahead of colour effect)
After this presentation I had my husband convinced that we should look for a good mix of tiles instead of one single design only. And this is what I did then on Sunday: google, print, cut and puzzle ...
cut and paste with paper tiles
I had "analysed" the different mixtures above and found that they all use 20 x 20 cm tiles and that although many different patterns were chosen, half or more of them where independent designs, only few tiles where just part of a pattern of four tiles. This is quiet interesting, since although sometimes more than eight different tiles were used for a wall the overall effect was still harmonious.
Our supplier, Callipo in Vibo Valentia, has a good selection of Vietri tiles, thereof
Francesco de Maio is our favorite manufacturer.
Since I am not familiar with Angelo's computer, I did "cut and paste" in a very traditional way. I printed the pages from the downloaded de Maio catalogue and cut with sisors the tiles we liked. This even worked out better, as I can now easily move little puzzle pieces and check out the best effect. As we need 7 m2 for the kitchen, and the minimum order is 1 m2 per design, we might order these seven different designs we had chosen above.
And, if one is undecided between wallpaper and tiles, I just found this solution - it looks like a tiled wall but it's not:
This is not a solution for wet areas in bathrooms or kitchens - and regarding the price (98 Euro/m2), you better go for real Vietri tiles, maybe not the antique ones, but antique pattern newly manufactured are available for less, depending on the design and colour.
