Middle Eastern Tile Design

A great find at our Goodwill Thrift shop on Carrillo Street in downtown Santa Barbara, FF sends me a shot of a ceramic tile, framed, with a delicate pastel decoration of stylized flowing foliage in a vase. This flowering tree is the Persian symbol for the Tree of Life, which offers connections between earth, heaven, and the afterlife, and the potential to burst into life. The flowers are the blessings of paradise (tranquility, fertility) and the tree is a cypress, the symbol of immortality. Note the pastel palette: light blue, green, and pink in Persian art suggest the tranquil side of Nature. The tree is abundance, prosperity and divine gifts. This image has a power that has spanned centuries and continents, as we shall see. The power behind this work is the cross fertilization of cultures. Something you don’t always expect to find at Goodwill.

Google Image Search offered amusing comparisons with other such tiles in other such places in the world: the tool showed me similar tiles in the UK’s Royal Collections Trust and tiles at a palace in Cuba, as well as the Wiki page of an artisan named Mohamed Boumehdi in Algeria. What do all these references have in common with this 3×2’ tile at the Goodwill Thrift last week?

The answer is the culture of al-Andalus: for seven centuries, the Iberian Peninsula and Islamic culture were inseparable. When Columbus arrived in Cuba on October 28, 1492, he claimed that Caribbean Island for Spain, and just a few months before Columbus landed, the mighty Granada, the last Muslim State in the Iberian Peninsula, had fallen under the forces of the Spanish Christian monarchy. For seven centuries, Arab architecture, art, and artifacts, dance, and design had shaped the Spanish diaspora; we can see it on our streets here in Santa Barbara. The influence is a direct reference to Mudéjar architecture of the Iberian Peninsula; tall arched doorways, courtyards, fountains, tilled walls… we know them well.

FF’s tile is a wonderful artifact made in the 1980s by the Algeria master craftsman Mohamed Boumehdi, whose forebears, and then his progeny, carried on the tradition of Middle Eastern design in ceramic tile. Queen Elizabeth II was gifted almost this exact work of art upon her visit to Algeria in 1980 by Algerian President Bendjedid. That tile is in the Royal Collections Trust, where the facsimile of FF’s tile resides. If FF will look very closely at the bottom of his tile he may find the artist’s signature in Arabic. (Algerian Arabic has been the official language of Algeria since 1963). Look for that!

The connection with Cuban culture and FF’s tile is through the influence of Islam on the Iberian Peninsula, which came to the Caribbean with Columbus’ ships in 1492. If any of our readers has visited the Casa de los Arabes in old Havana, he or she might have seen a similar framed tile set into the walls of the enclosed courtyard there. The museum, like so many other buildings in Cuba, is redolent of Spanish Mudéjar architecture from Granada. (Our own Granada Theatre was designed by A.B. Rosenthal in the early 1920s in this Spanish-Moorish influenced style, inspired by Granada, the Andalusian city in Spain, and the Alhambra Palace there.) 

The palatial Museum of the Arabs in Cuba is set in a 17^th century building with high Middle Eastern style doors, a central courtyard with a central fountain typical of the Moorish culture, and a peacock named Ali. The museum has showcased Cuban Arab heritage since 1983, a project originally undertaken by the City Historian’s Office and Fidel Castro. You will find such tiles in the Prayer Room, and in the 40-year-old Arab Union in Cuba, which represents the diaspora and descendants from the Middle East. 

I visited Cuba 10 years ago and, through an introduction from my past ballet teacher in Pittsburg, had dinner with a dance teacher there. I saw his school, the Lizt Alfonso Dance School, where a famous blend of Flamenco and Arab dance is taught. I learned that there are approximately 50,000 descendants of Arab migrants in Cuba and 1,000 variations of Arabic Latinized first and last names. Speaking to the Cuban ballet master, I learned that Arabs from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria came to Cuba 1860-1920, bringing with them another wave of Arab culture, food and dance.

FF has a wonderful work of art in his tile, and the value may surprise him. If it is indeed a work by Mohamed Boumehdi, the value is $1,000.