What was new about these tiles was the fact that, unlike clay and ceramic tiles, they didn’t need to be fired. Besides being more practical, this means that the colors of the finished pieces differ very little from those of the wet ones.
The technique for creating cement tiles involves pressing a mass — composed of cement sand, natural stone granules and color pigments — into a mold in the shape of the tile (which can be square, hexagonal, octagonal). The mold also can contain a divider mold, known in Spanish as trepa, which is designed to keep the colors forming the pattern separate from one another, as shown here.
The tiles are made individually, with each one taking about three minutes to craft. After a tile is compacted in a press and removed from its mold, it is immersed in water for several hours to start the curing process — Portland cement sets and becomes adhesive due to a chemical reaction between the dry ingredients and water. The tile is then left to dry for about four weeks.
What was new about these tiles was the fact that, unlike clay and ceramic tiles, they didn’t need to be fired. Besides being more practical, this means that the colors of the finished pieces differ very little from those of the wet ones. The technique for creating cement tiles involves pressing a mass — composed of cement sand, natural stone granules and color pigments — into a mold in the shape of the tile (which can be square, hexagonal, octagonal). The mold also can contain a divider mold, known in Spanish as trepa, which is designed to keep the colors forming the pattern separate from one another, as shown here. The tiles are made individually, with each one taking about three minutes to craft. After a tile is compacted in a press and removed from its mold, it is immersed in water for several hours to start the curing process — Portland cement sets and becomes adhesive due to a chemical reaction between the dry ingredients and water. The tile is then left to dry for about four weeks.
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