Making tiles, brick by brick

Take a fistful of clay. Add water to it. Make a lump-free dough. Spread it on a tray and cut it into required size. When it is dry, fire it in the kiln to produce the clay body. Glaze it with powdered glass mixed with water. Keep the back plain and groovy so that it adheres easily to the wall mortar. Now, get artistic.

Outline the drawing on the tracing paper with a stick, then transfer it to the surface of the tile by sprinkling the perforations with powdered charcoal. Pick up the brush and paint the tile. Or, draw directly on the tile and paint it. Then, fire the tile again at 1,050 degrees Celsius to fuse the glaze, definitively setting the painting. Soak it in water. And lo! the azulejo is ready for the wall.

Specifications

Azulejos? Never heard of it? Do not imagine ordinary tiles that are ready to be picked off the shelf, that are mass-produced in factories with one design. Azulejos are hand-painted tiles — one of a kind, perfect. Forgive a misshapen stroke somewhere. The blue a little too dark. These incredibly pretty tiles are created over long hours, with artists hunching over a tile for a long time to mix the colours and then painting it.

In India, these tiles are made only in Goa. Call azulejos an exclusive Goan art.
The word ‘azulejos’ is a combination of words from three languages — Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic. This art of painting on ceramic tiles originated in 15th-century Portugal. Soon, azulejos were everywhere in Portugal, with the king and the plebeian, the church and the mansion, the railway stations and the subways.

Azulejos depicting historic events, places of worship, culture and people’s habitat became everyone’s favourite wall decor. When the Portuguese arrived in India, they brought along not only chillies and pineapples, but also azulejos. Interestingly, during the Portuguese reign, there were no Goan azulejos artists; the tiles were imported from Portugal. However, the Portuguese also went back with azulejos. Their departure almost killed the art of hand-painted tiles in India!

Then, the art retuned to India, in a suitcase. Call it quirk of fate or absent-minded coincidence.

A Goan named Orlando de Noronha, with a five-year degree in commercial art from Goa Art College, loved music and art equally. His eagerness to learn the Portuguese guitar took him to Lisbon for a two-year stint. When he retuned to India in 1998, he didn’t pack musical notes, but ceramic tiles in his bags. That excess baggage were to change Orlando’s fate, and with him, the fate of Goan azulejos...

In search of art

In Panjim, Goa, I am looking for Orlando’s home and studio. In the early morning flurry, I notice a wall. A tiled wall on which  there is a painting of a girl peeping from a balcony. The colours are vibrant and the drawing is impeccable. A wrought-iron lamppost adds to the allure. I ask no more. I know this is where Orlando de Noronha lives.

A door creaks open and I am in the Mario Miranda balcony, Orlando’s tribute to Goa’s iconic cartoonist. The walls are cluttered with azulejos carrying Mario Miranda’s famous cartoons. Orlando has been painting Miranda’s drawings on tiles for nearly a decade. Besides creating tile mementoes of his designs, Orlando also makes huge murals.
In the beginning, Orlando says, he had a furnace that could only hold 30 tiles at one go; today, he and his team make nearly 10,000 tiles a month.

His studio has countless single-tiled designs, but Orlando still remembers the 3,600-tile mural that he made for Goa Tourism. It took them three months and loads of patience. It is almost 17 years since Orlando returned from Lisbon with a bag full of ceramic tiles. Years have gone by; Orlando still speaks Portuguese at home; he still plays the mandolin and violin; he still loves the Mario Miranda series of azulejos. Orlando de Noronha is now nearly synonymous with Goan azulejos.

The next morning, rain pelts and I drive to Bicholim to meet another azulejos artist — Shankar Tulsidas Turi — the man who has studied art in Real de Farbrica, Lisboa, the one who loves working in monotones — specially blue. He shuns reds and browns. For long, blue was the overbearing colour in azulejos. Now, the art has strayed from the all-blue azulejos of olden times and its palette includes every colour and gradient.

Shankar Turi can paint, sculpt and mould exquisite pottery. But azulejos are his love. Illustrations and figure drawings are his forte. His favourite azulejo motifs are Goan fisherwomen, toddy tappers, ferries, boats, Kunbi dance and bhatkars.

Over a plate of local sweetmeats, Turi tells me all about azulejos. Blue and yellow paint require less heat in the kiln. Red, green, brown require more heat. Tiles are fired for nearly five to six hours. The paint used in azulejos are made of glass powder and oxides, and do not fade with time. Dinnerware paint is different; the oxide colours of azulejos are toxic.

I rummage through a heap of azulejos. On one tile is a toddy tapper. On another is a Mario Miranda sketch. Blue monotone shimmers on a glazed square. A dandy sprawls over six ceramic tiles. A car spilling with humans adorns another tile.

Each one is painted sedulously. One stroke at a time. One wanton wave of placid Mandovi river. One arch of the eyebrow. One frond of the palm swaying in the balmy breeze. Each azulejo says a story. A Goan story.