Tile Addict followers will be aware that I am a huge fan of Peronda. I really admire this Spanish company’s ambition, bravery, ethos and energy. I also feel that they are one of the best at extracting value from teaming up with creative talents from outside the company. All this shows in the tiles which, year-on-year, startle, inspire and impress in equal measure.
Peronda offers several distinct brands to the market. With most companies, such sub-brands are either meaningless glass walls created for commercial rather than creative reasons, or a tacit internal recognition that a manufacturer simply does not have the creative resources to deliver many new exciting products each year; and so package what novelties they can produce in one designer brand, leaving the mainstream portfolio looking rather tired.
With Peronda it is different. Museum, Harmony and Peronda all offer cutting edge designs. They are just targeted at subtly different sectors of the market. And, at Cevisama this year, all three offered quite beautiful new ranges; many of which were the best examples of their type on the show floor: some achievement.
To stop Tile Addict mutating into Tile Bore, I will present just a few of these ranges today. However, I urge Tile Addict’s followers to visit the company’s website and explore the full Peronda portfolio in detail. I am sure you will love what you find there.
Harmony, a brand with a trailblazing reputation in design, offers a wide variety of products for surfaces of all kinds: from mosaics to assorted decorative products , including non-ceramic materials, perfect for bringing a distinctive touch of personality to settings.
Lins by Yonoh plays with light, using criss-crossing lines to generate visual effects perfect for transforming wall surfaces into huge murals. Lins by Yonoh takes advantage of the subtlety of lines as opposed to differing levels, so that shadow play and volumes are generated by the actual delicacy of the lines. The collection’s choice of neutral Mediterranean colours reflects its restful spirit.
This is a good example of a fruitful collaboration with an external creative talent. Yonoh is a design studio founded in Valencia in 2006 by two industrial designers, Clara del Portillo and Alex Selma. They work in the fields of product, graphic and interior design, with projects that stand out for their simplicity and functionality and designs with the emphasis on originality and innovation.
Onset is Harmony Signature’s new vintage range, designed by interior design studio Francisco Segarra. Onset brings a chic design appeal to industrial and vintage looks, with tiles conceived to lend added value to more exclusive settings.
Maison by Onset, also by Francisco Segarra for the Harmony Onset range, is a porcelain tile collection has transformed aged-looking ceramic tiles into a chic upper-class design tool. The collection’s white field tiles have a worn-looking charm. They can be combined with geometrically-patterned decors featuring the same white background and triangles, circles or squares. By mixing and matching the different shapes, innovative new design effects can be achieved.
Taking a stride forward by looking back, Medina is a new hand-crafted tile collection that is made in Morocco in accordance with traditional clay firing processes. Each individually made tile’s end appearance is unforeseeably unique thanks to their glossy mother-of-pearl glazes with a high degree of shade variation. The colour choices are white igloo, black, turquoise, red oxide and dark grey
The Peronda brand has also been through a productive programme of new product development. Portlligat is a new white body wall tile range that stands out for its colour and varying patterns. The field tiles come in a wide spectrum of blues, with a watercolour effect. They can be matched with the Creus décor that comes in three different linear patterns and the same colours and style as the field tiles. The standard 250 by 750mm format is elegant and powerful, drawing out the subtle strength of the blanco, gris, azul, cobalto and verde colour options.
Offering the totally on-trend terrazzo look, F S Ofelia – another collection by Franciso Segarra – takes a new look at classic terrazzo tiles, with trend-setting results suitable for a wide variety of settings. FS Ofelia fits in particularly well with industrial, 1950s or vintage settings. This revamped classic comes in two different models: FS Ofelia, which seeks to create a certain warmth through a combination of whites; and the darker FS Venecia, inspired by the terrazzo tiles made of smaller marble chips. Both are available in a 452 by 452mm format.
Further coverage of the design trends at Cevisama 2017 can be found in Tile & Stone Journal March 2017, Pages 44 -50 and April 2017, Pages 74-76, or online at www.tileandstonejournal.com.
A new post by Joe Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, April 2017.