Welcome back! We’re continuing the short series of photography posts that I started a few weeks ago. If you missed them, we started off with stained glass and then moved on to windows. You can find them on the homepage or by scrolling down to the list of my recently published posts (found on the right).

The theme I decided upon for today’s set of photographs is tiles. Not the typical kind of tiles you might find in a bathroom or kitchen, but ones that are much more decorative and maybe even tell a story. The ones I’m including here are all beautiful in different ways.

The tile below is found at the San Diego Botanic Garden. The bird tile alternates with a flower tile, but that bird is what caught my eye. It’s a colorful and seemingly content bird, tweeting a cheerful bunch of chirps. That’s the story I see on the tile. What story do you see?

These next three were all found in Portugal. I saw the two with the classical art at the University of Evora (established in 1559!), while the end photo was taken in a very famous pastry shop in Lisbon. A big part of Portuguese culture and art is their use of tiles, called azulejos. Click here for a really great article about them. Maybe it sounds silly, but my keen interest with tiles is apparently in my blood.

This next tile is at Mission San Juan Capistrano in southern California. It depicts Our Lady of Fatima in the Portuguese azulejo style, but with a colorful bit of Spanish design around the outer edges. The words below it are in Portuguese (Nossa senhora de Fatima, tende piedade de nós: Our Lady of Fatima, have mercy on us), and then there’s a dedication in memory of someone included in Spanish underneath it.

Check out this colorful staircase on the left! I really love these colorful tiles on the steps that I found in Monterey, California. I don’t know what story they’re telling, but what a beautiful sight to welcome the occupants home. The tiles on the right were in the same winery in Mexico that I mentioned in my last post about windows, the Santo Tomás Winery.

This next one isn’t tile work in the traditional sense, but I am fascinated with compasses and so I’m including it. It’s found in Monterey, California. I probably have plenty enough photographs of compasses (plus my tattoo of a compass) to make another blog post about them, but I decided not to go that route. (See what I did there? 😉)

Come back next week for the conclusion to my themed-photography series. It’s going to be a good one, for sure! As always, thanks for stopping by. ❤