Las antiguas fábricas de mosaico hidráulico en Navarra [The ancient factories of encaustic cement tiles in Navarre]

Abstract

Around 1860, a revolutionary technique to produce cement tiles that showed on its surface different and colouristic designs was introduced in Spain. This new sort of flooring, named encaustic cement tile, became popular firstly in Catalonia, under the circumstances of the Modernism (also known in the rest of Europe as Art Nouveau) that found in this new material a magnificent artistic support, and from there it was spreading across the whole peninsula, arriving to Navarre in the beginning of the 20th century. After of a first golden age, the traditional technique of the encaustic tile started to decline during the post-Civil War period, although it is manufactured to greater or lesser extent until the sixties, when the production of encaustic...