Novoceram Ceramic Tiles Imitating Wallpaper
10 March 2010
“Not of this World”
My father was an absolute wizard with wallpaper. He never really went bonkers with it, but most of the houses he lived in had one wall that he decorated with wallpaper, so it became a design focal point, as opposed to simply blanketing a home with wallpaper. He sometimes confined it within wood borders, and always he seamed it perfectly. The other thing I found particularly formidable was the absolute ease with which he installed it. I first saw him wallpaper a wall in our Helena, Montana home in the 1950s, and although I was a small boy at the time, it was clear to me that the Old Man had done this many times before.
For my own self, I could never really get my arms around the idea of wallpaper, both because of the perceived difficulty of installing it-knowing I would inevitably want to work to the Old Man’s standards-and because of the difficulty of cleaning it, because face it, there comes a time when one cleans it or paints over it. Well now, by gosh, someone has come up with a new type of wallpaper altogether, one that avoids the problems of both installation and cleanup by the simple of expedient of being a product that looks like wallpaper but is, in fact, ceramic tile!
Novoceram is a French firm that has come up with one of the most innovative ideas I have ever seen in tile, and that’s saying a heck of a lot, because, as my constant readers know, tile is one of my dominant interests in life. And I say that, knowing full well that before I began writing these blogs and searching out interesting items on the Internet, tile was something I never really thought about at all. It was always the ceramic stuff one puts at the back of countertops for backsplashes-big whoop. Well, now, I gotta tell you, that perception has most definitely changed!
Novoceram went at this particular project in ways that just blow my mind. I won’t presume to speak for them, to say which came first, the method or the inspiration, but what they did was create a way to mimic the look and feel of wallpaper. What they specifically wanted to do was to reproduce the floral detail and silky softness of Eighteenth Century hand-painted Chinese wallpaper. If you explore their website, you will soon come across a poem written by a Chinese poet who lived from 701 to 762 A.D. Li Bai is renowned for his imagery, and we can certainly see why in the poem they quoted:
“When I wake up I open my eyes:
“A bird is singing amidst the flowers;
“I ask him at what point in the year we are.
“He answers: at the point where the breath of spring makes the birds sing.”
Inspired by that poem, Novoceram created the charm of the wallpaper that Eighteenth Century Chinese might have used to illustrate this scene, depicting branches, blooms and birds in a soft, almost other-worldly setting. The ceramic tiles they used for this are huge, as much as 53″ by 70″, and they have been laid out in such a way that it is actually possible to arrange them in a number of different patterns, allowing the end user to make a design all his own. It’s the sort of thing that one can use on a short wall, or as a focal panel in a larger wall, or even as a design that takes up an entire large wall, as it is possible to repeat the design across the wall, just as one would do with wallpaper. All these years later I still remember the green ivy on white bricks wallpaper that covered one wall in our Helena dining room. As a kid I spent hours examining the perfection of the Old Man’s seams.
The other thing about these tiles, as I said at the onset, is the fact that they look like what they are not, like wallpaper. Because it is such perfection, I have mostly used pictures of their Florilege line with the flowers and birds, but with European artisans, it always seems to be first a design, then endless variations on that design. Another design for the Novoceram’s wallpaper-like tile is Tresjouy, which is made with a thin gold liseret over a tile made to give the effect of the original canvas fabric that would have been used in this design by Eighteenth Century artisans. We show it here as backdrop to a pool; and with that amount of water and humidity, no one with a brain that works would want to use the wallpaper this tile so closely resembles.
It’s a product and a concept that can be used almost anywhere, and one so stunningly original that it really is difficult to talk about it without gushing. Perhaps the best way to sum up Novoceram’s accomplishment is to simply quote another poem from Li Bai:
“You ask me why I dwell in the green mountain;
“I smile and make no reply for my heart is free of care.
“As the peach-blossom flows down stream and is gone into the unknown,
“I have a world apart that is not among men.”
Joseph
Leave a Reply
One Response to “Novoceram Ceramic Tiles Imitating Wallpaper”
March 18th, 2010 at 7:49 PM
Walls are probably the most noticeable and important part of the interior.
When entering into the room one notices the color, kind and surface of the wall straight away, together with the designs, it must be suitable with a good combination of design and colors.