What’s the entropy of broken tiles? You can’t unbreak an egg, say the laws of thermodynamics. But you can recreate beauty—and purpose—out of broken tiles.

Looking at tiles and appreciating them is a hobby I nurtured by going by all sorts of tile-rich places I saw almost daily while growing up in Barcelona. It’s a thing I used to love as a kid, and I wonder how many people appreciate little things like this from the places they grew up in.

Lately, I’ve been reading articles about my hometown in which locals are described as angry, frustrated, anti-tourist militants. It’s hardly news at this point: over the years, I’ve noticed so many articles highlighting the most pernicious effects of mass tourism or the long-lasting issues with petty crime in certain areas of Barcelona. The New York Times on August 20:

“This summer, thousands of local protesters in the Spanish city denounced overtourism. With more crowds expected for the America’s Cup, we visited the areas where tensions are highest.”

I don’t live in the city anymore (we left almost ten years ago, though we visit often), and I’ve been vocal in voicing my concerns about the things I didn’t like about the Catalan capital. It’s time to bring back some memories of the many ways in which I’ve felt welcomed and blessed in the place where we created our family.

It can be pleasant for anybody to walk around a city like Barcelona as much as possible, especially outside the high season, when it will be cooler and less crowded. Avoiding the hotspots will also help. That’s it; there aren’t any other tips, for the city can offer interesting experiences to those coming with an open mindset and a personal perspective.

For example, one could spend two weeks in Barcelona just discovering and getting to know the different designs of tiles in sidewalks and old buildings around the city: medieval, Renaixença-inspired (19th century), modernist-noucentista, modern, contemporary ones… With exceptions, many places won’t be crowded, and some will feel tucked away.

Wandering around —and staring at sidewalk designs

Inspired by my memories of how much I liked to walk on Barcelona sidewalks just to enjoy the different tile designs, I’ve been reading about the topic lately. Another Iberian city battling with the difficult balances of popularity and livability, vibrance and affordability, global tourism and locality, Lisbon, is the perfect place to explore the vernacular art of mosaic makers. These anonymous creators gracefully paved the city streets for generations (a few years back, local architect Luis Rebelo de Andrade explained to us how many of such mosaics hide a cryptic signature by the makers of each design, which one can spot if one knows where to look). I’d love to explore this topic one day.

One of my first distinctive memories about visiting Barcelona landmarks—known and unknown—as a kid goes back to days full of light. I’d stare at colorful tile mantles sparkling here and there in the sun as the little broken pieces put back together to create large mosaics that reflect light in unique ways. I must have thought they were precious gemstones.

These works of broken tile put back together to create something memorable once again were proof that, in art and appreciation, the second law of thermodynamics isn’t as cruel as it looks, and entropy can, in fact, be reversed, albeit differently. When you break multiple old tiles and bricks in multiple pieces aging differently, you can’t put them back together the way they were, but you can create something new out of it that can reclaim complete sense (and beauty) once again.

Those childhood outings would happen with elementary school, but also with my family on weekends, when we’d go to some park in or near Barcelona to play outside if it wasn’t the moment in the year to tend the garden they had outside town, or hot enough to spend the day under the pine trees by the sea, like good “domingueros.”

Blessed by the magic of cities (if you know where to look)

I remember going to a park that used extensively colorful tile mosaics made of broken bits and pieces of porcelain, glass, or faience. We children didn’t care about the authors—like the modernists Antoni Gaudí, Josep Maria Jujol, Domènech i Muntaner, Puig i Cadafalch—or the artistic value of the random designs depicting fantastic animals, geometric patterns, or organic drawings displaying the energies of nature freely; we just loved to see what looked like an extension of our playful mood.

As I grew up, I also learned to appreciate the simpler, more sober medieval tiles ornating many buildings near or around the Gothic Quarter. Unlike the Modernist tiles, the medieval ones in old fountains and ancient buildings used fewer colors and relied either on geometry or on figurative depictions of animals, everyday life, etc.

Those were years of design minimalism, and the ornate excesses of Catalan modernism (especially their tile mantles of “trencadís” or playful broken tiles showing all sorts of colors and textures) were despised by the intelligentsia as kitsch and cringe. Fast forward: when our third kid was born, we moved from the Gothic Quarter to a tranquil hilly residential area, Putxet. From the new apartment’s windows to the east, we could see Gaudí’s Parc Güell from the window. It was a reminder that I could go there so our kids would discover Gaudí’s animals and benches made of “trencadís,” or broken tiles, at the age I did. I’m happy they have their own memories of this same experience.

A few years before moving to the hills of Barcelona (we favored the center back then), in 2006, Kirsten and I asked someone at the Barcelona City Council to rent a space for our wedding celebration. We couldn’t believe it when they let us use the Castle of the Three Dragons; they must have thought we were a very responsible young couple. The place is a castle-shaped building of red brick, four towers, and ceramic decoration built by Domènech i Montaner for Barcelona’s 1888 Universal Exposition. I realized that the fantastic shapes and tiles of the building were imprinted in my memory as a child, as was Gaudí’s Park Güell.

Inside the Castle of the Three Dragons, which was being decommissioned as the former Museum of Natural Sciences of Barcelona and was undergoing some renovation, we gathered under the suspended skeleton of a blue whale. We felt blessed and grateful for the city where we lived then, which shared so much with us and many others, asking little in return.

The anonymous artists that fill the world with meaning

To people (and certainly to children), none of these works were “works of art” made by somebody but had the spirit of being the outcome of an entire tradition, the blueprint of a particular artisan guild. They were mass-produced, yet not identical, so the observer’s eye enjoys how each of them will individually age differently, showing the uneven patina of time on non-identical surfaces.

With mechanical reproduction, things become less expensive and more readily available, yet many argue that something gets lost along the process of mass production, as the uniqueness of artisan work is replaced by impersonal precision and the uniformity of precision.

In 1935, cultural critic Walter Benjamin tentatively named this loss of non-tangible beauty. To him, mechanical reproduction destroys the uniqueness of a work of art, and with no authenticity—he argued—there’s no “aura.” An aura also exists when there’s an educated particular perception, and the observer chooses to appreciate the uniqueness of an object.

“The uniqueness of a work of art is inseparable from its being imbedded in the fabric of tradition. This tradition itself is thoroughly alive and extremely changeable. An ancient statue of Venus, for example, stood in a different traditional context with the Greeks, who made it an object of veneration, than with the clerics of the Middle Ages, who viewed it as an ominous idol. Both of them, however, were equally confronted with its uniqueness, that is, its aura.”

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin, 1935

Benjamin argued that mechanical reproduction changed not only the objects but also our perception, for things that aren’t unique anymore don’t require educated appreciation: Why learn to look at and maintain something that isn’t precious and can be easily replaced?

Aura of handmade objects

But, when thinking about the loss of authenticity of mass-produced objects lacking an “aura,” Walter Benjamin refers only to unique works of art and not everyday things like, for example, handmade furniture, home ornaments and furnishings, or clothes. What about the long tradition of artisanal work and vernacular architecture, the rich history of anonymous people using their craft in a meaningful and authentic way, yet anonymously and without artistic aspirations?

Medieval Europe benefited from the collective, mainly anonymous labor of workers’ guilds. These organizations regulated product production and quality; apprentices had to undergo rigorous training to serially produce certain goods, eventually becoming craftsmen and masters of their trade.

One such collective endeavor producing almost identical objects that nonetheless maintain a recognized artisanal character is tile production. Anyone can enjoy this when visiting buildings with tiled surfaces across Europe, the Islamic world, and the main stops of the Silk Road from the Mediterranean to China.

Tiles and artisanal bricks were already used to decorate and protect important buildings in Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. Over the centuries, tiles evolved from a measure of protection in walls, floors, and roofs (the Latin word “tegula” refers to terracotta roof tiles) to encompass a sophisticated form of decoration and prestige, which fostered innovation among Islamic potters.

Some of these early medieval techniques reached Moorish Spain before the 10th century when decorative “zellige” tiles using multicolor and geometric Islamic, Roman, and Byzantine patterns became pervasive in public buildings and homes of notable families. Soon afterward, artisans from the rest of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, or Britain developed their own patterns, though tiles—then a sign of wealth and power—remained rare: abbeys, parish churches, royal palaces, and the houses of the wealthy.

A world worth exploring: tile designs and craft

According to tile scholar Hans Van Lemmen, tile manufacturers relied on specialized artisans to gather the materials seasonally and get the kilns ready. Despite the somehow standardized process, no two shops did identical work, as the work of particular artisans or batches was also different: the clay was dug in winter and “matured” until summer, although the technique relied on weather patterns, and clay wasn’t uniform or interchangeable across areas.

Other processes, such as preparing and shaping the clay, glazing, and firing, also relied on ancient techniques improved and adapted by local guilds. Kilns required proper firing to bring temperatures to around 1,000 degrees Celsius, but the lack of devices to reliably measure the temperature transformed the task into experienced guesswork. Relief tiles gained popularity in Northern Italy, Austria, Switzerland and Germany, whereas marble mosaic floors (derived from ancient mosaics across the Mediterranean) returned to France and Britain.

When a bubonic plague pandemic known as the Black Death killed 30% of Europe’s population in the mid-14th century and stalled the commerce of goods and ideas for decades, tile manufacturing increased its localisms, and Christian-themed scenes and symbols gained in popularity. Later, the commercial prosperity of the Renaissance led to a new frenzy of floral and geometrical motives.

Instead of disappearing, inlaid (two-color) tiles from the 13th century spread across Gothic works in France to the rest of Europe, as some tile makers and other artisans traveled from city to city in search of work such as abbeys, cathedrals, palaces, and important houses. The Age of Discovery connected this rich tradition with vernacular motives in the Americas and beyond.

A tip from a friend: Henry Chapman Mercer

When we think about the beauty of uneven, motive-rich heritage tiles, the US doesn’t come to mind, but inlaid tiles and their complex, semi-artisanal manufacturing process regained popularity during the Gothic Revival period, both in Britain and across its colonial area of influence during the late eighteenth century.

Later on, as industrial production was transforming the world, the Arts and Crafts movement sparked a vigorous reinterpretation of what “tradition” meant. In the United States, New York’s Hudson River School highlighted for the first time the value of building one’s home with artisanal techniques associated with the defunct guilds. Artist-made homes eventually spread across the US, sometimes experimenting with new vernaculars that didn’t look only in the European tradition.

Not long ago, as I traveled with Kirsten and the kids across the East, loosely following the Eastern downslopes of Appalachia, we got an email that got me interested:

“I think that you should check out the Mercer Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The museum was created Henry Chapman Mercer during the early 1900s. Mercer was concerned about the loss of handmade objects and tools that were a foundation of early Americans’ way of life, as a result of industrialization. So he gathered almost 30,000 items ranging from hand tools to horse-drawn vehicles and assembled an encyclopedic collection in a system of his own devising. To enhance the collection’s educational value, and to share it with the public, Mercer decided to design and build a museum to display the artifacts. Anyway, I think the things in this museum are becoming more and more relevant as people craft their self-reliance!”

As soon as we got back home, I tried to get as much information about Henry Chapman Mercer as possible, and I luckily ended up finding him highlighted in a remarkable book, Artists’ Handmade Houses by historian and landscape architect Michael Gotkin, and otherworldly pictures by Don Freeman. As Eve m. Khan wrote about Gotkin’s care and love for these few handmade houses in a New York Times review when the book came out in 2011:

“He mourns when the creators or their heirs destroy the environments. He and the photographer Don Freeman have paid homage to 13 reasonably or meticulously well-preserved places in a new book, ‘Artists’ Handmade Houses’ (Abrams).”

Handmade designs across the US: stop at Eliphante

By the way, Gotkin included among the featured stories that of Eliphante, a whimsical, kaleidoscopic 1980s concrete cave-home in the Arizona desert developed by Michael Kahn and Leda Livant. I had heard about Eliphante from a really close source: Lloyd Kahn, the American authority in self-built homes, housing editor at the Whole Earth Catalog back in the sixties, and author of the seminal book Shelter (1973), has explained to Kirsten and I in a couple of occasions how much Eliphante meant for him.

Michael Kahn was his friend and cousin, and they influenced each other with their creative, impactful endeavors. Lloyd has mentioned Eliphante in his blog several times (including this note about his passing).

I especially like Lloyd’s celebratory post from April 4, 2008, about Michael Kahn’s life and art, which starts with one of Lloyd’s classic references when opening an article while he’s on a creative roll: the opening of The Weight by The Band. When I read “I pulled into Nazareth…,” I go on reading, and it sounds like the song:

“I got into Prescott (Arizona) around six last night. It was March 30, the day my cousin Michael Kahn was born 72 years ago, and I was coming from a celebration of Mike’s life and art at his creekside sculptural compound of buildings near Cottonwood, Arizona. Mike left this world on December 22, 2007 (the winter solstice), a victim of Pick’s Disease, a degenerative brain disease similar to Alzheimer’s. His wife Leda organized an outdoor gathering, and about 125 friends of Mike’s and Leda’s showed up to talk about and remember the life of this gentleman who touched many people’s lives with his art and presence.”

A Celebration of Michael Kahn’s Life and Art, Lloyd Kahn’s blog, April 4, 2008

A Celebration of Michael Kahn’s Life and Art, Lloyd Kahn, April 4, 2008

Lloyd goes on to explain that he dedicated 10 pages of Mike’s buildings in his book Home Work: Hand-made Shelter, also mentioning an article in the New York Times on Eliphante and an interview with Leda Livant talking about the legacy her late husband:

“Any fool can hire an architect to draw up a plan for a house, but it takes a truly inspired fool—which is to say, an artist—to start building and see where the earth and driftwood and shards of broken pottery take him, and an equally impassioned fool—say, a woman in love—to go along and carry the rocks on her back.”

A Handmade Home, The New York Times, January 31, 2008

Meet Henry Chapman Mercer

This is how it was with the little-known sculptural home that is Eliphante, three acres of fantastical domes, shacks and follies created over 28 years by Michael Kahn and his wife, Leda Livant. Here there is the residence, which has 25-foot ceilings and incorporates rocks and scraps from construction sites; there, a studio, one wall of which is the Ford pickup that brought the couple west; and a labyrinthine art gallery called Pipedreams, in which every painting has its own environment.

The magically-sculptural freestyle shown by Michael Kahn in Eliphante contrasts with a very particular reinterpretation of cultural heritage, including tile production and use, by Henry Chapman Mercer, which is the opening story in Michael Gotkin’s book:

“Ceramicist Henry Chapman Mercer (1856-1930) channeled his early passion for archaeology when he designed and built Fonthill, a home that was both a residence and a curiosity cabinet, filled with artifacts from his studies and decorated with his own tiles and ceramics.”

Artists’ Handmade Houses, Michael Gotkin, 2011

Thanks to art historian Charles Eliot Norton, Mercer’s years at Harvard weren’t a total waste: once explored, his appreciation and curiosity for art and design from all ages only grew. After college, his family pressured him to settle down and become a lawyer; luckily, he dropped out consequentially, becoming a master ceramicist the way master ceramicists practiced their task during medieval times: humbly, skilfully, and with an appreciation for beauty.

But Henry Chapman Mercer’s appreciation for architecture and pottery from the Old World didn’t deter him from experimenting with new materials and techniques; only he wanted to do it using shapes and finishes, reminiscing from a long guild tradition by going beyond a mere Arts and Crafts revival.

Celebrating a life’s work

Built between 1908 and 1912, Mercer’s home was one of the first residences using reinforced concrete. From the outside, the house looks straight out of a Tim Burton movie set in Tudor’s England, though the house (big by any means, as he was planning to make a museum out of it) was designed from the inside out, “used first and looked afterwards,” according to Mercer himself. He called it Fonthill.

“The concrete that Mercer employed also made it possible for him to embed his own tiles and his collection of historical ceramics in the walls and ceilings on Fonthill. He saw the decorative potential of concrete as a background field for his tiles. Improvising from an ancient Roman construction technique that Mercer called ‘earth vaulting,’ he described the process: ‘You stand up a lot of posts—throw rails across them—then grass—then heaps of sand shaped with groined vaults, then lay on a lot of tiles upside down and throw on the concrete.”

Artists’ Handmade Houses, Michael Gotkin, 2011

Thanks to the building’s sheer size, Mercer could use the house’s public rooms as a showroom for his ceramic tiles. Mercer continued to incorporate new tile designs until his death in 1930. Did he want to show Americans that mass production didn’t need to eliminate skillful ornaments with a long tradition?

I’ve been revisiting Artists Handmade Houses for days, and I can’t understand how a book like this is out of print. As a good coffee table type of book, this work stands out thanks to the insightful, precise text and Don Freeman’s photography. I don’t know him, but I can see that he’s been studying still-life paintings by the old masters; his pictures have so much depth, attention to apparently random detail, and an understanding of light that is still pre-Instagram and look so refreshing and timeless to me.

As Michael Kahn’s Eliphante, Fonthill is certainly on my list of things to see —and be inspired by. Beautiful things can follow a serendipitous, organic design. Instead of mass-produced, soulless spaces, some artists’ handmade houses are proof of human ingenuity.

These houses behave like the works of art for which their builders are known, though most vernacular handmade homes are as beautiful despite lacking any particular signature, just like the recognizable—though always slightly different—tiles that ornate medieval buildings.