Favo di Fornace

I call this wallpaper Favo di Fornace thinking of the hands that, tile after tile, closed a floor or a wall in a design with neither beginning nor end. It belongs to handmade exposed terracotta, the old technique in which clay, shaped and fired in the kiln, keeps the trace of the gesture that formed it. The subject is precise: hexagonal terracotta tiles, each a true regular hexagon of almost hand-sized dimension, fitted honeycomb-fashion without a break, separated by a thin ribbon of pale lime grout, spread by hand along every side.

Seen from a distance, the eye reads an even weave with no focal point: burnt earth, terracotta, ochre and brown trading shades from one hexagon to the next, as if every piece had come out of the same firing. Close up, the clay reveals its living nature: clouding, grain, small pores and fire marks, while the lime of the grout shows the uncertain edge of the hand that pressed it.

In this I find the sense of every Favo di Fornace wallpaper: the beauty that comes from imperfect repetition, from work that pursues not precision but the truth of the material. It is a design meant to stay, timeless, on the free wall that every interior, home or hospitality space, keeps for what is authentic. WallZad prints it as an act of respect towards the craftsman who first worked this earth.