Lazarus Tiles

The best kind of renovation.
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Feast your eyes on these floors! This home in Birkirkara forms part of an elegant row of mid-century townhouses. The floors feature a variety of patterns in muted and pastel tones and when works beckoned, so did danger.
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Luckily for these tiles, the owners were immovable on their desire to retain and restore the floors as an essential part of the fabric of their house.
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Some had to be removed entirely to pass new drains and electrics but the tiles were carefully dug out, cleaned and relaid, some in new configurations, but almost all retained.
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Suffice to say, this makes me very happy.

I love spotting tile patterns in vintage photographs.
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The carried a fascinating article by Giovanni Bonello about pre-war advertising postcards which were a mix of photographs, semi-illustrated photographs and illustrated poster-style adverts. In the first photo you can see the dining room from the Hotel d’Angleterre on St Lucy Street and Strait Street.
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The writing about Maltese cuisine back then was quite entertaining and especially ironic, coming from the British. Judge Bonello writes how Gladys Peto was unimpressed by the food served in Malta in 1928. Even when not positively awful, something was almost always wrong with it: “It tasted Maltese.”
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Well, scathing reviews aside, I looked down, as always. Lo behold, the Orkida pattern, though hard to be sure if it’s the red variety since the photo is in black and white. I’d bet it is though, since it was a popular colour and the use of a singular motif in red on a white background was often used.
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In the last photo you can see a variety of similar patterns, (from top left CW) Silla Ħamra from Ħal Qormi, Aniżetta Ħamra from Sliema, Papoċċ Aħmar from Ħal Balzan and Orkida Ħamra from Ħaż-Żabbar