Antoni Gaudí

ANTONÍ GAUDÍ (Reus or Riudoms, Tarragona, 1852 - Barcelona, 1926).
Hydraulic paving tile. Designed by Gaudí for Escofet. Batlló House. Casa Milà and La Pedrera. 1904.
Edition produced by Escofet Barcelona (stamped on the back).
Seven tiles like this one are exhibited in the Design and Architecture section of the Museum of Modern Art MOMA in New York.
Measurements: 25 x 25 x 2,2 cm.

This tile, produced by Escofet, a company founded in 1886, was designed by Antoni Gaudí in 1904, as interior flooring for the Casa Batlló, where the concepts of sea and water are his source of inspiration. However, due to a delay in its production it could not be applied and Gaudí chose to use it in his next great work, the Pedrera. Its hexagonal format forms a continuous, homogeneous pavement without guidelines, as the line that separates each piece is hidden and the texture of its relief is imposed thanks to the light. This unique geometry, far from conventional square shapes, allows Gaudí to pave the spaces of his buildings with sinuous contours. It was Gaudí himself who defined the design of the piece with wax, with which the author demonstrated his skill in the sculptural field. The relief drawing makes complete sense when seven pieces are joined together, thus revealing three marine elements, a conch, a starfish and a seaweed. In the case of the conch, a cephalopod fossil of the ammonite class. The starfish, a non-exact version of echinodermus of the class Ophiroideus, similar to the starfish, since starfish have five extremities and in this case there are six. The algae, a plant of the thallophyte type, of the genus Sargassum. The six-sided profiles are reminiscent of the cells of a beehive or the pattern of turtle shells. The drawing faithful to the original shows the figures in bas-relief, the starfish, the conch and the seaweed, which evoke the sinuosity of marine movement. Seven tiles like this one are exhibited in the Design and Architecture section of the Museum of Modern Art MOMA in New York, as the first product considered industrial design and the consequent revolution that originated the models of his time, designed these instead with a variety of pieces to compose similar pavements. Gaudí thus solves with the design a complex procedure and of great production with a single piece. The tile is also on display at the Design Museum of Barcelona and the National Art Museum of Catalonia MNAC.