Sorry for the long break – been caught up with some unexpected events and my plans needed to be reorganised somewhat. I also need to deal with some loose ends I left in Amsterdam, which inspired me to collect these photos. (I don’t want to say I need to „cut” those loose ends as I want to keep my ties to this beautiful city.)

So this is another visual research post, with less text and analysis and loads of pictures. I was fascinated by the patterns these tiles make up, and I was quite intrigued by how often they seem to „clash” or „mismatch” with each-other (such as different on wall and floor) not to mention the extra play with the patterns on the external facade and other details (e.g. the railing of the stairs on Fig. 10). I even saw one incorporated into glass (Fig 2).

No doubt some of these are quite new but I do wish I could somehow organise them by chronological order and would be able to find some typology. If you expect fancy delft blue ones, you might be surprised: there are much more colours to be discovered in the city. I particularly love those that are left to fall off, I’m not so sure why I’m so obsessed with urban decay but I love the randomness of those. This post is however visual research only, so I don’t mean to present them as having any kind of value in the photography genre, but quite simply as a source of visual information. For those readers who are familiar with the city, you might be able to retrace my walk 🙂

There is much to say about reading buildings and being able to decode the details on them, but sadly I know very little about these particular buildings and I do wonder how these tiles were curated to be put together and what are the regulations when it comes to renovating them. If you have any information about that, please get in touch. Until then, enjoy these Dutch tiles!