When you walk through Barcelona to admire Modernism, the Catalan version of Art Nouveau, you should not only look up at the facades of the houses of Passeig de Gràcia, but also at the ground. Then you discover hexagonal relief tiles with eye-catching maritime motifs depicting starfish, algae and ammonites. Each individual tile shows a third of the three different maritime life forms, meaning that only 7 tiles make up the entire pattern.
The history of this tile takes us back more than 100 years, to the height of Modernism and the peak of the creative power of Antoni Gaudí i Cornet, one of Barcelona's most famous architects.
At the turn of the 20th century, Passeig de Gràcia in the new suburb of Eixample had developed into a magnificent boulevard where families who had become wealthy as a result of the industrial revolution wanted to demonstrate their economic power and artistic cosmopolitanism. They chose the most renowned architects to construct their city residences or to transform existing buildings into representative residential and commercial buildings.
In 1898, chocolate manufacturer Antoni Amattler i Costa commissioned architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch to completely redesign his existing house on Passeig de Gràcia into a magnificent Art Nouveau building. His neighbor, the textile industrialist Josep Batlló i Casanovas, could not be inferior and chose Antoni Gaudí as architect for the renovation of his house in 1904. Like Puig, Gaudí not only redesigned the façade, but also worked on the design of the rooms and designed furniture, mirrors, lamps, ceiling, wall and floor coverings. He was inspired by natural organic forms because, according to Gaudí, “Nature is the big and always open book in which all you have to do is read.” With this in mind, he also developed the hexagonal tiles, which, however, could not be installed in Casa Batlló for production reasons.
Pere Milà i Camps, publisher, owner of the Barcelona bullring and dandy from a good family, was impressed by his father's business partner's Casa Batlló and commissioned Gaudí to build a house on a large plot of land on Passeig de Gràcia in 1905, while the Casa Batlló was still being renovated. However, Casa Milà, a monumental stone sculpture, was too daring for the citizens of the time and was nicknamed “La Pedrera”, the quarry. Here, the maritime tiles were finally used in the luxurious rental apartments, namely in the playrooms, which were intended for the leisure activities of children and adults.
In honor of Gaudí, the pattern was reissued by the city of Barcelona in 1997 and tiles with a larger diameter and with sunken relief were laid on Passeig de Gràcia. The so-called “panot Gaudí” is his most famous non-architectural work and was one of the first industrial designs to find its way into MoMA in New York.
At Mosáico, we make this style icon in any of our 36 primary colors so that you can admire this exclusive design in your home every day. Thanks to the non-slip relief pattern, it is also particularly suitable for wet areas.