Ceramics in Seville

The ceiling of the Hall of the Ambassadors at the Alcazar in Seville always blows my mind. The brilliantly coffered surface is designed to be a starry sky. The domed ceiling is set at the end of the Courtyard of the Damsels, with enough mudejar plaster and stonework to rival the Alhambra. Takes your breath away! But it is Seville’s love of ceramic tiles that makes it special.

When the rivers of gold began to flow from South America into an austere feudal society based on land, religion and war with the Muslims, the effect on the economy was remarkable. Lots of religious paintings were created, a few remarkable palaces and thousands of tiles to carpet the walls in brilliant coloured patterns. The traders and the intelligentsia were mostly Jewish or Muslim, but they had to leave, much to the damage of the Iberian economy. So the gold and silver flowed in by the ship-load and flowed out in demonstrations of military, religious and material display.

Over the 16th century, the northern Italian city states, the Dutch and the English competed for trading empires and built their own economies that outlasted those of Spain and Portugal. When Seville was the capital of the Spanish Empire, she glistened and glowed with tiles and mudejar encrustations. A wonderful memorial to an austere medieval society that learned to live with luxury but no middle class to create a personal ambition!