Tile & Grout: The bane of my spring cleaning
By Veronica MacDonald
An Accidental Anthropologist
Tiles are beautiful things. The Ancient Romans made beautiful and intricate mosaic pictures for the wealthy with tiny pieces of tile. And ask any beachcomber what their favorite piece of sea-tumbled material is, and you’re likely hear tile rather than sea glass or driftwood.
But the one place I cannot stand tile is in my bathroom. In theory, tiles are waterproof and should be easy to clean. But in reality, little microbes inhabit and discolor the grout between each tile, making my spring cleaning a miserable experience. So who ever invented such a thing?
The Tile Association in Kent, England says tile as old as 18,000 years has been found in the Nile River in Africa. Ancient surviving tile can be found in the Gates of Babylon, which date back to 600 B.C., Ancient Egyptian pyramids, Ancient Greece, Ancient Turkey, and other Arab, Persian, and Moorish countries today.
Even the roots of the word “tile” are ancient. The Latin word “tegula” and its French derivative “tuile” refer to baked clay roof tiles. There is then a small jump to the Old English word “tigele” to the modern English version of the word, “tile.” The word “ceramic”’ comes from the Greek word “keramos” meaning pottery; it is related to an old Sanskrit root meaning “burnt stuff.” And of course, no ceramic tile can be made without a lot of fire and heat, ultimately baking and burning the material.
Once the idea of tiles spread from Africa and the Middle East to Europe, new forms of art were invented. The Romans may be the most well-known for tile mosaics, however, they were also popular in Spain and Portugal. By the 12th Century, the Dutch invented faiences, earthenware decorated with opaque colored glazes. The British and Dutch also developed tile iconography.
Tile-making was big business. It was a family enterprise – the father passing on the proprietary knowledge to his son, or sometimes a master to a student. Very little documentation exists on how tiles were made, since their creation was only passed down orally and by demonstration.
But the tiles that remain tell us a lot. First of all, old tiles were either unglazed (baked once) or glazed (baked twice). Glazes were made from materials such as white lead, flint, china stone, china clay, copper, and metal oxides. Tiles were then decorated with stamps or plates. Other forms of early tile decoration were hand-painting, hand-scratching, and hand-molding using a wooden block.
And if you have ever walked into a tile studio or the tile section of a hardware store, you’ll see the possibilities are endless: big and little, earthen or shiny, glass or stone, raised or smooth, expensive or inexpensive…the list goes on.
Tiles are very durable, which has made them a popular material. They can survive being walked or driven on and pelted with water or dirt. But as of right now, my scrub brush is still sitting in the bucket. Tiles may be great, but they are still a pain to clean!
Veronica MacDonald Ditko is originally from the Jersey Shore, but married and settled in northern New Jersey. Her journalism career started a decade ago after studying Psychology and Anthropology in Massachusetts. She has written for several newspapers and magazines including The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Springfield Union News and Sunday Republican, Happi, Chemical Week, The Hawthorne Press, The Jewish Standard, and more.