Azulejo | Hacker News Reader

Azulejo

en.wikipedia.org

190 pointsAmorymeltzer64 comments

Doing a little activism here: please don't buy old ones while visiting Portugal/Spain/etc., as they are commonly stolen goods. Thanks, from Lisbon.

I'll take advantage of your domain knowledge :) Where's the best place to find local artists that produce them?

In Spain, if you drive 1 h 20 minutes southwest of Madrid you get to Talavera de la Reina, which is a town all about ceramic and pottery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talavera_de_la_Reina

I would love to help, but it's not my domain. I, unfortunately, witness the side-effects of people stealing them on my day to day. There are many shops in Lisbon that sell them, and there's even a beautiful museum here that it's definitely worth visiting (or signing up for a workshop!): https://museunacionaldoazulejo.gov.pt - it's currently closed for renovation; it should reopen later this year, but that's yet to be confirmed.

When buying - on the streets or in a shop - if it looks old, unless provenance is absolutely clear, please don't.

Viúva de Lamego is not a "local" artist per se but they're a leading artisanal workshop in classic and contemporary Portuguese tiles. If you have the budget, their tailor-made tiles are something else, imagination is the limit. (source: my dad does a lot of house restorations in Portugal and some require custom tiles to fill in missing/damaged areas)

Can second this. Happy customer here. Amazing experience visiting their factory. Seems like a real institution. There were in fact a bunch of artist at the factory working with them there when we visited.

You will find great artista in Spain and Portugal. I can recommend you Talavera de la Reina in Toledo, Spain. It has a centuries old tradition of producing quality ceramics.

I just googled it and apparently these are often chipped of historical buildings and sold as tourist souvenirs. Thanks for informing us

Indeed, it's sad. They are staple here in Portugal, covering entire buildings. Beautiful examples: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3BK1BoMVsgRY38eG8 and https://maps.app.goo.gl/fquP923g13xtbSxU8

Meanwhile there are many masters that make these tiles today - I know one personally! - and they all struggle to find clients.

Azul[0] is a great board game inspired by this style.

Easy to start, can get quite complex, heartily recommended!

[0] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul

It really gets complex in a 4 player version and if also if you play thr version where the colors of the tiles are not set on the board. Fun game!!

I love it, still my favorite game after all those years, there is so much depth with such a simple mechanic.

Whenever I want to play with a game engine I reimplement a version of it

2 player can lead to fist fights.

I assumed the word was derived from "azul" but from the article, it's apparently derived from the Arabic الزليج (al-zillīj) and has no relation with "azul"

interestingly, apparently "azul" also comes from the arabic "lāzuward"

I always thought it came from lapis lazuli (portuguese). Azul as a subpar of Lazuli even sounds exactly the same in portuguese.

In french we have “azur”

Lapis Lazuli is cognate, both come from the same Arabic/Persian root. Apparently “azure”, “azul”, “azzurro” lost the L because it got confused with the common “l’” article,

Rebracketing strikes again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing

And the word from arabic comes, for both of them comes from persian for hte term lapis lazuli (lāžward) and suposedly this comes from sanskrit... but I ignore how it may sound in sanskrit.

The arabic word for "azul" is أزرق (azraq) so they all look pretty adjacent.

Azul 100% comes from Arabic (well Persian, but through Arabic), although I think the specific Andalusian form that was borrowed was a bit different from that.

Portuguese here - many Portuguese words have origin from Arabic as Portugal has been conquered and occupied by "the Moors" in 8th~13th century. That's a long time! Alentejo, Aljezur, Algarve, and many of the cities in the Southern part of the country have have Arabic origins.

So much so that the controversy over the use of “insha’Allah” by non-Muslims was missed by me, Portuguese has “oxalá”, and I could not understand the problem. It’s funny how many words we use in Portuguese and Spanish that have their origin in the Moorish time.

Arab Orthodox Christians have been saying "inshallah" longer than Muslims have been around.

Some words also came into Portuguese from African slaves who were Muslim.

And also from the Lebanese who immigrated to Brazil in the XX century.

I'm Brazilian and I had never connected "insha'Allah" to "oxalá". Wow, TIL.

At least we were taught in school that if a word starts with "al" then there is a big chance it has roots in Arabic.

And the surname "matamoros"!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Matamoros

> The Christians marched on the cry of ¡Dios ayuda a Santiago! "God save St. James!". They slew more than 5000 Muslims and James became known as "Matamoros".

OK, I'm going to go out on a tangent, and put this SE topic where they discuss why "James" is the English equivalent of "Santiago", because it didn't seem reasonable.

https://spanish.stackexchange.com/questions/4588/why-is-sant...

This wikipedia article, the wiktionary entry for Portuguese, and the Spanish wiktionary entry all have different etymologies lmao.

As a Spanish speaker it seems really hard to believe it's not azul + -ejo. They're literally blue.

Even more confusing since they are indeed often blue and white, like other ceramics.

Azulejos are still a staple in Brazilian architecture. It is a common wall covering in clean areas like bathrooms, kitchens, hospitals.

This is one of those words that can sound exotic, but for the locals would be so plain and uneventful to hear. Kinda like all the Japanese words being used for software project names on Github.

It is staple but not an art. They're just tilings.

What the Spanish, Moroccan and Portuguese do with azulejos / zellij is miles ahead. It is intricate, complex and beautiful.

Those countries just take the think into crazy high levels of beauty. Brazilian azulejos are not in the same league.

To say that Brazilian azulejos are the same as the Moroccan/Spanish/Portuguese is like saying that a Ferrari Testarosa is the same thing as a VW Beetle (Fusca), that a Fugue by Bach is the same thing as Funk Carioca, that a Crepe Suzette is the same thing as a pancake with orange jelly: technically correct but still absolutely wrong.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=zellij+morocco&sxsrf=APpeQns...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=azulejo+sevillano&udm=2&sxsr...

What you call azulejos is basically tilings, which are mostly tiles with geometric patterns (or just a color) covering an area. Azulejo, in the "strict" portuguese (of Portugal) sense are usually a painting in the tiles (not on each individual tile, but on the whole). Mostly a work of art, yes..

By the way, there is also another "infrastructure" element that is used as art in Portugal - calçada portuguesa [1], which is also very interesting.

[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal%C3%A7ada_portuguesa

> but also had a specific function, such as aiding temperature control in homes.

How? Why even mention it without a blurb about what that even means?

Indeed, I would be interested to know if this was more than just albedo.

Came here looking for this comment.

Especially given its occurrence in the summary paragraph, that is a strong claim and I would like to know more.

Some googling turns up social media links expanding on this claim ("reflective and insulating") but not immediately anything authoratative.

Ceramic tiles make rooms colder, which makes them popular in warm climates. They reflect heat, are decent insulators and prevent temperature swings.

Amazing how an article from Wikipedia easily trends on HN for no good reason, while many posts go unseen under the [new] tab.

I think this fits nicely under the guidelines of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" a lot more than all of the AI marketing blogspam over there.

Nah, this has way more to do with karma points than with "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

I've seen submissions by original authors not trending, but then someone with enough karma points booming the same article in a second submission, and then folks having to adjust or point to the original submission to give the proper credit (and karma points) to the author.

Visiting [newest] always has a handful of entries that are genuinely interesting, but never trend. At all.

I challenge HN team to bring one to three random entries from [newest] into the [news] (trending) page as an exercise.

Note: I meant [newest]

Well, being able to chat about arts and culture is a nice surprise in the current sea of AI slop.

Also they are easier to clean in a bathroom/kitchen.

I use Zellij and only recently had a colleague tell me that the name comes from Arabic and had not made the link to "Azulejo". It makes sense of course, considering they all refer to some form of tiling :)

Why does a random Wikipedia article gets bumped so high here? :D

I’ve been curious for a while the cheapest way to create a small run of azulejo tiles with printed design and very strange (puzzle piece like) shapes

I just visited Lisbon, and their azulejos are fantastic. We also have great examples in Mexico. But, why was this posted in HN?

I'm always puzzled how ordinary Wikipedia pages make the front page. There must be some rare planetary alignment that gets so many people to upvote something that is plain and ordinary.

To be clear, this isn't about azulejos specifically. I'm just talking about the pattern in general, whatever the topic.

HN is aggressively moderated. Certain types of stories which are popular on other social medias get limited or zero frontpage time on this site. That allows for niche curiosity stuff to bubble up.

I visited Colonia del Sacramento on a day trip from Buenos Aires, and I remember these beautiful tiles all over the old town.

Is this related to a Forgejo

I've read somewhere Forgejo comes from esperanto.

You might have read that from their [faq](https://forgejo.org/faq/)

> Forgejo (pronounced /forˈd͡ʒe.jo/) is inspired by forĝejo, the Esperanto word for forge.

Nope, not at all, very different etymologies

Forgejo running on Azure

TIL: that Azulejo and zellig (zillig) have similar roots.

Zellij is Moroccan from Fes, Morrocans bring it to Iberia

Annoying article in that sentence 2 mentions temperature control and that’s the last mention

I also wanted to see more about the temperature control aspect and was scanning the article for it. Some quick additional searching elsewhere turned up possible effects such as reflective surfaces, thermal mass, and moisture buffering.

More of direct experience instead of a scientific explanation, but it feels cold to the touch. I would guess it is related to thermal conductivity.

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