Maintaining effective communications with customers across the world is currently a huge challenge for every tile manufacturer. Country-wide lockdowns, and severe travel restrictions, have been exacerbated by the cancellation of Coverings, and other major trade exhibitions.

At Diary of a Tile Addict we have decided that we have to rise to this challenge and adopt our on-line communication platform to help our tile manufacturing colleagues around the world. Since it was set up three years ago, Diary of a Tile Addict has been a purely independent editorial platform: a non-commercial, not-for-profit, arena for Joe Simpson and his select team of tile enthusiasts to share their deep passion for ceramic tiles.  Now, to support the industry we love, we have decided to open up Diary of a Tile Addict to select tile manufacturers for the first time. From today, we are contacting known and trusted tile brands to offer them one FREE post during an initial three month trial, covering April, May, and June 2020 … on a strict first-come-first-served basis.

The first company to sign up is Peronda; the hugely influential and admired Spanish designer-tile brand. And Peronda has selected a truly fantastic range – FS Raku – to kick off Tile Addict’s three month trial.

As part of his 50th anniversary edition, Francisco Segarra has created a wonderful wall tile collection inspired by an age-old pottery technique: raku. With raku techniques, pottery coated in a metallic glaze is fired in a special kiln until it reaches a bright-red firing temperature. It is then removed and, while still red hot, covered in wood chips or slivers of paper to generate combustion and lots of smoke. This penetrates the glaze and becomes an integral part of the finished item.

Francisco Segarra took this ancient technique as his source of inspiration for the FS Raku range, experimenting with it and coming up with a brick-format tile whose colours, textures, crackle effect, and surface nuances all evoke the authentic beauty of raku pottery.

FS Raku comes in rich and complex White, Cream, Sage, Blue, Silver, and Black colour options in a versatile 200 by 400 by 11mm format. This white body wall tile works supremely well with the distressed decoration of the FS Roots floor tile range.

It is hard not to fall in love with the FS Raku range. It plays to the Wabi Sabi trend, offers achingly beautiful glaze effects, and yet it is tremendously versatile in terms of both colour and format. It is, quite simply, one of the best new wall tile ranges on the planet, and proof positive that when designers and manufacturers explore ceramic’s deep roots and traditions, magical and enduring new designs with integrity and authenticity emerge that have a great contemporary appeal.

Peronda

A new post by Joe Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, April 2020.