In Portugal, tile It came from the hand of King Manuel I who, dazzled by the Alhambra, wanted to decorate his palace in Sintra with this type of art. Thanks to this, teachers from Triana and Talavera worked in Portuguese lands, spreading the technique throughout the country and reaching our days.
The tiles stopped being imported once the national production was promoted in Portuguese lands. Unlike Spain, Portuguese tiles have a baroque design, predominantly predominantly blue inspired by Talavera profiles, influences from Chinese ceramics and Dutch tiles from the city of Delft.
El term tile comes from lapis lazuli, which is a semi-precious blue stone. The word blue gave rise to zulej, which means polished. In the Iberian Peninsula, it was introduced by the Arabs. At first, they were made using the tiling technique, which joined monochrome pieces of glazed clay cut out geometrically. Later, the so-called dry rope was used, in which a cord of oil separated the different enamels. These, once fused, provided a darker color.
The flat or Italian tile was introduced in Spain by Nicolás Pisano who, in the middle of the XNUMXth century, began to manufacture it in Seville, reproducing drawings and geometric figures. This new technique, much less expensive than the previous ones, began to have an echo in Manises, Talavera de la Reina and Catalonia, where large-scale production began. The church had a lot to do with the expansion of these tiles, since the facades and friezes of its temples were profusely decorated with ceramic coverings.
During the seventeenth century, an authentic blossoming of tiles took place and the taste for them allowed palaces and noble houses to have their baseboards completely covered with this technique. Lisbon and Coimbra, important centers of the Manueline style, promoted tilework. Meanwhile, in Rota da Luz, where the councils of Aveiro, Estarreja and Ovar are located, at the end of the XNUMXth century and the beginning of the XNUMXth, ceramic cladding began to be used on urban facades, with a great profusion of motifs.