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170 points by Amorymeltzer 3 days ago | 59 comments

Doing a little activism here: please don't buy old ones while visiting Portugal/Spain/etc., as they are commonly stolen goods. Thanks, from Lisbon.

asimovDev 10 hours ago

I just googled it and apparently these are often chipped of historical buildings and sold as tourist souvenirs. Thanks for informing us

jcmfernandes 9 hours ago

Indeed, it's sad. They are staple here in Portugal, covering entire buildings. Beautiful examples: https://maps.app.goo.gl/3BK1BoMVsgRY38eG8 and https://maps.app.goo.gl/fquP923g13xtbSxU8

santiagobasulto 10 hours ago

I'll take advantage of your domain knowledge :) Where's the best place to find local artists that produce them?

world2vec 9 hours ago

Viúva de Lamego is not a "local" artist per se but they're a leading artisanal workshop in classic and contemporary Portuguese tiles. If you have the budget, their tailor-made tiles are something else, imagination is the limit. (source: my dad does a lot of house restorations in Portugal and some require custom tiles to fill in missing/damaged areas)

rimeice 5 hours ago

Can second this. Happy customer here. Amazing experience visiting their factory. Seems like a real institution. There were in fact a bunch of artist at the factory working with them there when we visited.

fcatalan 10 hours ago

In Spain, if you drive 1 h 20 minutes southwest of Madrid you get to Talavera de la Reina, which is a town all about ceramic and pottery:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talavera_de_la_Reina

jcmfernandes 9 hours ago

I would love to help, but it's not my domain. I, unfortunately, witness the side-effects of people stealing them on my day to day. There are many shops in Lisbon that sell them, and there's even a beautiful museum here that it's definitely worth visiting (or signing up for a workshop!): https://museunacionaldoazulejo.gov.pt - it's currently closed for renovation; it should reopen later this year, but that's yet to be confirmed.

When buying - on the streets or in a shop - if it looks old, unless provenance is absolutely clear, please don't.

andrewl-hn 4 hours ago

Meanwhile there are many masters that make these tiles today - I know one personally! - and they all struggle to find clients.

senko 11 hours ago

Azul[0] is a great board game inspired by this style.

Easy to start, can get quite complex, heartily recommended!

[0] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul

ustad 9 hours ago

2 player can lead to fist fights.

dgellow 10 hours ago

I love it, still my favorite game after all those years, there is so much depth with such a simple mechanic.

Whenever I want to play with a game engine I reimplement a version of it

tchalla 11 hours ago

It really gets complex in a 4 player version and if also if you play thr version where the colors of the tiles are not set on the board. Fun game!!

s20n 10 hours ago

I assumed the word was derived from "azul" but from the article, it's apparently derived from the Arabic الزليج (al-zillīj) and has no relation with "azul"

txbrown 9 hours ago

Portuguese here - many Portuguese words have origin from Arabic as Portugal has been conquered and occupied by "the Moors" in 8th~13th century. That's a long time! Alentejo, Aljezur, Algarve, and many of the cities in the Southern part of the country have have Arabic origins.

portugueasey 8 hours ago

So much so that the controversy over the use of “insha’Allah” by non-Muslims was missed by me, Portuguese has “oxalá”, and I could not understand the problem. It’s funny how many words we use in Portuguese and Spanish that have their origin in the Moorish time.

heyjamesknight 8 hours ago

Arab Orthodox Christians have been saying "inshallah" longer than Muslims have been around.

rescbr 5 hours ago

I'm Brazilian and I had never connected "insha'Allah" to "oxalá". Wow, TIL.

At least we were taught in school that if a word starts with "al" then there is a big chance it has roots in Arabic.

forinti 8 hours ago

Some words also came into Portuguese from African slaves who were Muslim.

And also from the Lebanese who immigrated to Brazil in the XX century.

a34729t 4 hours ago

And the surname "matamoros"!

opminion 4 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Matamoros

senadir 10 hours ago

The arabic word for "azul" is أزرق (azraq) so they all look pretty adjacent.

Laurel1234 5 hours ago

Azul 100% comes from Arabic (well Persian, but through Arabic), although I think the specific Andalusian form that was borrowed was a bit different from that.

lookeey 10 hours ago

interestingly, apparently "azul" also comes from the arabic "lāzuward"

vasco 10 hours ago

I always thought it came from lapis lazuli (portuguese). Azul as a subpar of Lazuli even sounds exactly the same in portuguese.

wvbdmp 10 hours ago

Lapis Lazuli is cognate, both come from the same Arabic/Persian root. Apparently “azure”, “azul”, “azzurro” lost the L because it got confused with the common “l’” article,

decimalenough 10 hours ago

Rebracketing strikes again!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebracketing

nudpiedo 9 hours ago

And the word from arabic comes, for both of them comes from persian for hte term lapis lazuli (lāžward) and suposedly this comes from sanskrit... but I ignore how it may sound in sanskrit.

dgellow 10 hours ago

In french we have “azur”

Laurel1234 6 hours ago

This wikipedia article, the wiktionary entry for Portuguese, and the Spanish wiktionary entry all have different etymologies lmao.

As a Spanish speaker it seems really hard to believe it's not azul + -ejo. They're literally blue.

stronglikedan 4 hours ago

> but also had a specific function, such as aiding temperature control in homes.

How? Why even mention it without a blurb about what that even means?

ajb 3 hours ago

Indeed, I would be interested to know if this was more than just albedo.

aaroninsf 3 hours ago

Came here looking for this comment.

Especially given its occurrence in the summary paragraph, that is a strong claim and I would like to know more.

Some googling turns up social media links expanding on this claim ("reflective and insulating") but not immediately anything authoratative.

brunoborges 5 hours ago

Amazing how an article from Wikipedia easily trends on HN for no good reason, while many posts go unseen under the [new] tab.

1bpp 4 hours ago

I think this fits nicely under the guidelines of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" a lot more than all of the AI marketing blogspam over there.

brunoborges 3 hours ago

Nah, this has way more to do with karma points than with "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

I've seen submissions by original authors not trending, but then someone with enough karma points booming the same article in a second submission, and then folks having to adjust or point to the original submission to give the proper credit (and karma points) to the author.

Visiting [newest] always has a handful of entries that are genuinely interesting, but never trend. At all.

I challenge HN team to bring one to three random entries from [newest] into the [news] (trending) page as an exercise.

brunoborges 3 hours ago

Note: I meant [newest]

voxleone 10 hours ago

Azulejos are still a staple in Brazilian architecture. It is a common wall covering in clean areas like bathrooms, kitchens, hospitals.

jventura 4 hours ago

What you call azulejos is basically tilings, which are mostly tiles with geometric patterns (or just a color) covering an area. Azulejo, in the "strict" portuguese (of Portugal) sense are usually a painting in the tiles (not on each individual tile, but on the whole). Mostly a work of art, yes..

By the way, there is also another "infrastructure" element that is used as art in Portugal - calçada portuguesa [1], which is also very interesting.

[1] https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal%C3%A7ada_portuguesa

jwrallie 9 hours ago

This is one of those words that can sound exotic, but for the locals would be so plain and uneventful to hear. Kinda like all the Japanese words being used for software project names on Github.

diego_moita 4 hours ago

It is staple but not an art. They're just tilings.

What the Spanish, Moroccan and Portuguese do with azulejos / zellij is miles ahead. It is intricate, complex and beautiful.

Those countries just take the think into crazy high levels of beauty. Brazilian azulejos are not in the same league.

To say that Brazilian azulejos are the same as the Moroccan/Spanish/Portuguese is like saying that a Ferrari Testarosa is the same thing as a VW Beetle (Fusca), that a Fugue by Bach is the same thing as Funk Carioca, that a Crepe Suzette is the same thing as a pancake with orange jelly: technically correct but still absolutely wrong.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=zellij+morocco&sxsrf=APpeQns...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=azulejo+sevillano&udm=2&sxsr...

725686 3 hours ago

I just visited Lisbon, and their azulejos are fantastic. We also have great examples in Mexico. But, why was this posted in HN?

rubslopes 3 hours ago

I'm always puzzled how ordinary Wikipedia pages make the front page. There must be some rare planetary alignment that gets so many people to upvote something that is plain and ordinary.

To be clear, this isn't about azulejos specifically. I'm just talking about the pattern in general, whatever the topic.

0xDEAFBEAD 3 hours ago

HN is aggressively moderated. Certain types of stories which are popular on other social medias get limited or zero frontpage time on this site. That allows for niche curiosity stuff to bubble up.

badc0ffee 4 hours ago

I visited Colonia del Sacramento on a day trip from Buenos Aires, and I remember these beautiful tiles all over the old town.

leflambeur 6 hours ago

I use Zellij and only recently had a colleague tell me that the name comes from Arabic and had not made the link to "Azulejo". It makes sense of course, considering they all refer to some form of tiling :)

aanet 3 hours ago

TIL: that Azulejo and zellig (zillig) have similar roots.

bravura 7 hours ago

I’ve been curious for a while the cheapest way to create a small run of azulejo tiles with printed design and very strange (puzzle piece like) shapes

smel 6 hours ago

Zellij is Moroccan from Fes, Morrocans bring it to Iberia

agilestoic 6 hours ago

Why does a random Wikipedia article gets bumped so high here? :D

inigyou 10 hours ago

Is this related to a Forgejo

sav_m 10 hours ago

I've read somewhere Forgejo comes from esperanto.

statox 10 hours ago

You might have read that from their [faq](https://forgejo.org/faq/)

> Forgejo (pronounced /forˈd͡ʒe.jo/) is inspired by forĝejo, the Esperanto word for forge.

augusto-moura 8 hours ago

Nope, not at all, very different etymologies

inigyou 7 hours ago

Forgejo running on Azure

anthk 9 hours ago

Also they are easier to clean in a bathroom/kitchen.

Angostura 10 hours ago

Annoying article in that sentence 2 mentions temperature control and that’s the last mention

slfnflctd 9 hours ago

I also wanted to see more about the temperature control aspect and was scanning the article for it. Some quick additional searching elsewhere turned up possible effects such as reflective surfaces, thermal mass, and moisture buffering.

jwrallie 9 hours ago

More of direct experience instead of a scientific explanation, but it feels cold to the touch. I would guess it is related to thermal conductivity.

reindeer2 7 hours ago

[flagged]