Sometimes a tile is just a tile, other times a tile is a weird and wonderful addition to the world. Material, method, design, and outcome can all make and shape a tile into a wacky wonder so we’ve selected five of the most peculiar.
1. Lieske Schreuder‘s Snail Poo Tiles
The one thing that set us off on a quest to find strange and quirky tile-related creations were the wildly wacky snail poo tiles. After noticing that snails will eat and defecate colour, Dutch designer Lieske Schreuder began an experiment. Feeding snails various colours of paper and cardboard, their excrement was then ground, mixed and pressed into tiles, maintaining the rough bubbly texture of the unique material.
2. Nicole Nadeau‘s Nipple Tiles
Nadeau created these unusual tiles using a single breast mould, with each glazed white apart from the 3D pink nipples. En masse the nipple tiles are almost unrecogniseable as ceramic breasts but up close it’s a surprising sight.
3. Tiled Transport
We’re up for mosaicking anything, but one of the strangest surfaces to cover in tiny tiles is an automobile. One of our earliest blog posts details the trip in which the original Tile Addict encountered this magnificent mosaic muscle car. But that wasn’t the only time we encountered a tiled car, as at Cersaie in 2005 Italian mosaic company Aquae Musivae displayed a crowd-gathering mosaic-covered vintage Fiat 500 – no longer a drivable car, but definitely a show-stopping exhibit.
4. The Production of Fatigue by Léa Mazy
Fatigue inspired French designer Léa Mazy to produce this series of intriguing tiles. Showing how low-on-ink printing cartridges still contain the potential for beauty within their last few drops, Mazy challenges our perception of ‘faulty’.
5. TOUCHY-FEELY by Stephanie Davidson and Georg Rafailidis
These FOUND SPACE TILES by TOUCHY-FEELY are more concerned with tactile properties than appearance. With moulds taken from people leaning against walls, a series of uncanny and familiar 3D forms have been created that entice individuals to lean against them again and enjoy space in a novel way.
A new post by Hanna Simpson, Diary of a Tile Addict, October 2020.