The pattern completes across four tiles or more
A geometric pattern tile carries a quarter, a sixth or an eighth of a figure. Put four or more together and the figure closes; look at one alone and it makes no obvious sense.
That has a practical consequence people meet at the wall. The size of the field and where it gets cut decide whether the figure reads whole, so a patterned backsplash is laid out on paper before it is ordered rather than after.
Why eight inches
Eight inches is the traditional cement tile format, and the patterns in this range were drawn for it over a century ago.
A smaller module makes the figure too fine to read from across a kitchen; a larger one gives too few repeats on an 18 inch band between counter and cabinets. Eight inches gives two full courses on that band with a little over, which is about as close to designed for the job as an inherited standard gets. Cement tile sets out how the material is made.
Handmade is the largest series
Handmade carries this range, alongside Ikat, Flama, Bautismo, Kristiba, Dalia and Chiaro, which are pattern names rather than colors.
In a cement tile the pattern is formed by a thin brass divider set into the mold, with each compartment filled by hand in a different pigmented mix. The lines have a slight softness where two colors met and the registration shifts a little from piece to piece, which is how a handmade pattern differs from a printed one.
Multicolor is the color
Half of this range is described as multicolor, with whites, blues, a brown, a gray and a beige behind it.
That follows from what a pattern is. A figure needs at least two colors to exist at all, and most of these carry three or four, so the color field on a pattern tile is describing the piece rather than picking a shade. Multicolor tile and mosaic is the wider range.
Thickness varies more than the size
The size never changes and the thickness runs from 15/64 of an inch to 3/4, with 5/8 the largest group.
That spread separates the materials. The thick pieces are cement and handmade stone, which had to be substantial to survive making; the thin ones are fired tile. It is the figure to settle first, because a patterned panel meeting ordinary tile at a different height undoes the effect.
Honed, polished and crackled on a pattern
Honed leads the finishes here, with polished, matte, crackled, tumbled and a rustic textured face behind it.
A crackled glaze over a pattern is the combination worth noticing. The network of fine cracks runs across the figure rather than with it, so the pattern and the crackle sit at different scales and the surface reads as genuinely old rather than merely patterned. It is the closest a new tile gets to a floor that has been there a hundred years.
Where a pattern belongs
One wall, or one panel of one wall. A patterned backsplash is usually the only decided thing in a kitchen, and it works because everything around it is plain.
The wall behind a range is the traditional position, framed by plain tile or stopped at a shelf. Backsplash tile takes in the plain formats too, and cement tile is the material most of these patterns belong to.
