ZELLIGES : (continued)

(...) The moral of the story is that an industrial tile has now achieved perfection of manufacture but exudes boredom and monotony, while the little zellige from Fez , battered and imperfect, like ourselves full of defects and regrets, appeals to us. As if, by controlling everything, we have lost the essence of the magic. When earth is purified too much, and seems as artificial as plastic, when the shapes that come out of the mould are all exactly the same, when the firing is totally controlled and policed, so that it no longer reveals anything of its savage participation in the process, and no longer uses kilns burning wood or olive pits, but properly channeled energy: gas or electricity. The moral of the story, on full view on the walls of my kitchen, enables me to accept the occasional accident, action by another force, whether human or natural, and considering that these contradictions are a source of richness. That is a great deal of effect for mere little squares of terracotta glued onto a wall, but their visual appeal is so intense that they served as a reference in the working methods that I adopt for everything that I produce. And as each time I depart from that logic I am disappointed, I am not going to abandon it now.