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The genesis of the tile dates back to the civilisations of the Near and Far East. It was widely used as a decorative wall covering, especially for waterproofing masonry. It came to us from the Iberian Peninsula, especially from Portugal, which achieved great development between the 16th and 19th centuries.
There, the suitability of tiles for architecture acquired a peculiar character.
The maritime discoveries, combined with the Italian-Flemish influence, gradually produced major transformations in Portuguese tiles.
In this work, the historian Domingos Vieira Filho comments that in 1778 107,402 tiles arrived in São Luís.
These tiles were probably applied as tiles inside churches or houses, since the taste for tiling the façades of single-storey houses and townhouses in Maranhão only began in the 1840s.
In the middle of the 19th century, a “new way of using tiles emerged in Brazil, which led it to move from the interior of churches, convents, palatial residences or buildings for official use, to the exterior” of façades.
External tile cladding became widespread in coastal cities from north to south, including Belém, São Luís, Recife, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre, among other cities with a less frequent practice of tiling façades.
In the nineteenth century, the golden age of the Maranhão economy, tiles were widely accepted as a façade covering material, especially in properties belonging to Portuguese planters and merchants, enriched by the production and export of cotton and rice.
This acceptance is attributed to the aesthetic improvement that the tile incorporates into the façades, while protecting them from the winter rains that occur for six months in the region.
In the 19th century, a significant number of carpet tiles with various patterns, manufactured using the stamping technique, were imported from Portugal for use on the facades of the houses of São Luis.
See History and Colonial Architecture of São Luís do Maranhão, Tourist Spots of São Luís do Maranhão and History and Chronology of Portuguese Tiles.
The trade treaty between Brazil and Portugal, dated 1834, although allowing commercial transactions with other European countries, announced the preferential purchase of china and tiles from the Metropolis, not favouring the other production centres, which only sent their products to Maranhão on a very small scale.
From the middle of the 19th century, when Maranhão was enjoying its socio-economic heyday, tiles were used to protect and embellish the façades of urban houses, which were constantly subject to the predatory action of the intense rainfall in the region.
According to Santos Simões, ‘it was from Brazil that the new fashion for façade tiles came to the old metropolis – a curious phenomenon of reversal of influences’.
Examples such as Rua Direita, 397, Rua do Ribeirão, 68 or Rua de São Pantaleão, 441 are notable for their modulation with architectural elements.
Between 1843 and 1879, several ships arrived in the port of São Luís with loads of tiles, 90 per cent of which came from Lisbon and the rest from the city of Porto.
São Luís also received tiles from France, Belgium and Germany, but in much smaller quantities.
Tiles are applied to façades in full, in part or as isolated adornments.
Normally, the tiling appears on the main façade (including the front of the belvederes), but some corner properties also have the side façade fully or partially tiled.
The tiles covering the façades are of the carpet or plain type, made using the stamp, decal, relief and marbling techniques.
Most of the patterns define the composition with the repetition (with rotation) of four pieces, but there are patterns in which the composition is defined in a single piece.
Most of the tiles that arrived in Maranhão are 13.5cm x 13.5cm. The trim has dimensions of around 6.75 cm x 13.5 cm (friezes), with a corner piece measuring 6.75 cm x 6.75 cm and surrounds measuring 13.5 cm x 13.5 cm.
When there was no corner piece suitable for a particular trim, it was common to make a half-square cut (45º) to adapt the orthogonal combination of the frieze.
Due to their geometric design structure, some tiles allow for variations in the composition of the carpet.
In São Luís, the configuration or positioning of the pieces ‘of tiles on the façades acquired peculiar characteristics due to the different ways in which a standard unit was applied, thus giving rise to different compositions of carpets of the same tile’.
The production of manufactured tiles depended on the technical resources available.
Thus, the chromatic and surface irregularities resulting from the clay compositions, the manual skills for moulding, glazing and decorating, and the control of firing, would only be overcome with mechanisation.
The biscuits were moulded by pressing the clay into wooden moulds. Dried in the shade and after a first batch, the biscuits were glazed with lead oxide and tin, making the surface white and opaque.
Once decorated, they were put through a second firing, during which the pigments and the base glaze melted into the surface.
Eventually a third soft firing might be necessary.
Subjected to temperatures of up to 1000°C, cracks and deformations were inevitable. Improvements were sought with slow, uniform firing and the selection of clays capable of better performance against the contractions and dilations resulting from sudden temperature variations.
The Industrial Revolution led to the production of tiles on a commercially advantageous scale, contributing to the exhaustion of the artisanal process. Paints, prints and materials were also produced mechanically.
However, despite the importance of mechanisation, the tiles produced in this way have never been as fascinating as the manufactured ones, in which the irregularities or imperfections of each piece give them notable particularity.
Curiously, the greater the technological development, the less the aesthetic result of serialised production.
Tiles come in a variety of shapes, sizes, ornamentation and manufacturing techniques. They are made up of a backing or biscuit and a finishing surface, flat or raised, and adorned or not with decorative motifs.
Most of the tiles that arrived in Maranhão are 13.5cm x 13.5cm. Some are rectangular and bevelled, measuring 9.25cm x 18.5cm or 11.8cm x 18.4cm.
The trims have two basic formats: with dimensions of around 6.75cm x 13.5cm and a corner of 6.75cm x 6.75cm, or 13.5cm x 13.5cm and a corner of the same dimensions.
Apart from the figurative panels and tiles designed for specific locations, the vast majority of tiles are structured as isolated figures or grouped together by breaking down the square into rectangles, triangles and circles.
They feature ornamental schemes of Renaissance and Mannerist origin. In many cases the compositions result from the union of four identical pieces.
Others are completed in two pieces, with the ornament rebated to form a composition of four elements. Few have independent ornaments.
Some allow for variations in composition.
Amongst those produced industrially are mechanical stampings.
Others, which are rectangular and have recurved corners, are also of industrial production from the middle of the last century. Some are embossed, possibly produced by the Massarelos Factory in Porto or the Devezas Factory in Vila Nova da Gaia.
The reliefs could have been obtained by pressing clay into wooden negatives or liquid clay into plaster moulds.
See also São Luís do Maranhão balconies – window grilles and tiles and Facade tiles in São Luís do Maranhão
