Spanish Traditional Tiles in Malaga
Not surprisingly tiles are everywhere in Malaga given the history of tile production over thousands of years in Southern Spain.
From mosaic tiles to more subtle plainer tiles they add so much character and pattern to the city.
Mosaic Factory Malaga
Near to my studio there is a wonderful Tile shop that does a modern take on the traditional tile - and they even have a facility where you can design your own personal mosaic pattern. See the Mosaic Factory instagram for more. They are based in Tangier since 2002 and have showrooms in Paris, London AND Malaga!
Tiles in my Art Studio
In my art studio I am standing on a protected tile floor that was featured in the recently published “Malaga Patterns” book and accompanying exhibition by Nielo Muñoz. It’s a beautiful historic floor with amazing tile work (and I should know as my father was a master tiler in Ireland and I worked for him when I was young!).
As you all probably know at this point I am not an neat artist(!) so in order to protect the tiles I covered them up with a protective flooring to keep them clean and paint free.
I took a few pictures to show on this blog before I covered them up.
As you can see the tiles are very traditional. The whole studio is very traditional Spanish with 3 large shuttered full floor to ceiling height windows that open up to 3 interconnecting balconies. I feel very lucky to paint here and am glad I am in a space that has a Spanish feel to it and is not some anonymous warehouse outside of town.
As you can see in the above pictures the tiles are now covered up. It maybe looks less authentically Spanish now but at least the tiles are fully protected for future generations to enjoy!
Malaga Patterns
To read more about Malaga tile work, see Malaga Patterns Instagram with a beautiful book available also (all of the text is in both Spanish and English so it is very accessible!). The book is for sale in the Carmen Thyssen Museo Giftshop and the independent book store “Mapas y Compañia”, in Malaga.
