Tread on baked earth

I fondly remember the clatter of us children jumping on terracotta tiles that fell from the unused part of the roof at my grandma’s place in Allahabad. The earth-coloured tiles looked beautiful. We may not see too much of this material used in modern buildings now, but terracotta has been around from ancient times. It was used for building and decorative arts by cultures and civilisations around the world. Literally meaning ‘baked earth,’ it is made of natural clay, which gives it a characteristic reddish-brown colour.

The colour varies slightly depending on the clay used. Terracotta may be glazed for extra durability or to provide colour. The best part about the tile is that it is waterproof and a sturdy material, which is why so many ancient terracotta sculptures are still in excellent shape.

A much-advanced form of terracotta tiles are flooring tiles with stunning patterns and a smooth finish. You can also check out some designer tiles for your home. Beautifully paved, the flooring tiles can be easily adapted to modern-day architecture and can lend a warm look to the interiors. Ceilings and wall claddings are other areas where you can use terracotta. Patterned tiles can make for an artistic wall or ceiling. Terracotta can help in controlling the indoor temperature thereby making it a weather friendly tiling option. It is definitely an aesthetic relief from the usual.

Terracotta tiling can also be used for lawns – it adapts naturally to the green environment and looks very much a part of the space. You can choose from handcrafted or machine-made tiles. These rustic tile pieces will surely add to the charm of any space. Gayathri Rao from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala decided to restore her ancestral house and did it all with terracotta tiles and antique furniture. “Terracotta has come in very handy in creating the warm traditional look,” she says. If not the complete flooring or walls, do add some glazed artistically done terracotta tiles to a blank wall or ceiling to bring it alive with colour and warmth. 

Terracotta tiles are beautiful in their natural state. However, they are very porous. In order for them to be durable, they need to be sealed, often more than once during the initial installation.

Sealing can be rather tedious, so you may want to leave this to a professional. The sealing is a tedious process too, requiring two-three days perhaps.

A terracotta flooring is very easy to maintain and clean, once sealed. It can be used in just about every area of the home, owing to its versatility. Because it is highly water resistant and also resistant to the elements, it can be used outside, on patios and driveways.

Inside the home, terracotta tiles are used in kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms and entryways. They are water, allergen and bacteria-resistant, a plus for most homeowners. As an added plus, terracotta tiles are very affordable.
n These tiles look better as they age.

Terracotta tile flooring is not as hard as other types of flooring, yet it is still durable. Additionally, it does not feel as cold under your feet. For these reasons, it is a favourite for use in kitchens and bathrooms.

Terracotta was widely used in the decorative arts of ancient China, perhaps most famously in the tombs of soldiers of the second century BCE emperor Qin Shi Huangdi. Terracotta vases and other sculptures were known to have been found in ancient Egypt, the Mediterranean, the Middle-East, West Africa, and Central and North America. In fact, it was the terracotta pipe that was one of the oldest materials used in plumbing.

Though terracotta largely fell out of use in Europe during the Middle Ages, its use in building and sculpture was revived in the Renaissance Gothic style, and it has remained an important material even in the modern era.

Construction methods improved over the ages, as terracotta was once baked in the sun, later dried among ashes in the oven, and finally kiln-fired. While terracotta was used to make roof tiles and bricks in the ancient world, it became more versatile as a building material during the modern era.

Tiles with 15 mm thickness have some advantages such as lower shipping and installation costs. The installation is also possible on concrete or on old floors with ceramic tile adhesives. It is possible to cut the tiles using common ceramic tile cutting tools too. The one big downside is that it has no glaze on the surface and can pick up and store dirt and dust very quickly. So be ready to mop and clean as and when required. There are synthetic cleansers available in the market that can be effectively used to clean these tiles.

Surfers compete for $20,000 cash prize in weekend tourney

Costa Rica will host surfers from all over the globe at the Quicksilver Open. The tournament begins Friday and runs through Sunday.

The tournament will be held at Santa Teresa Beach on the central Pacific coast province of Puntarenas where the surfers will compete for a $20,000 prize purse. The top three finishers will also receive a camera from Olympus, the tournament’s sponsor.

“We have confirmed people from 15 different countries, and we’re expecting more than 30 to be coming from outside of Costa Rica,” said Carlos Enrique Brenes of the Costa Rican Surf Federation. “In all we’ll be expecting about 80 total competitors.”

Among the confirmed participants are world-class surfer Clay Marzo and two-time Costa Rican national champion Gilbert Brown.

According to a press release from Quicksilver, the Costa Rica Open will be “the first professional international surfing tournament that Costa Rica has held in the past few years, where surfers from anywhere in the world are allowed to compete.”

For Brenes, the tournament holds many oppertunities not only for Costa Rican surfing but also Latin America.

“Hopefully now international surfers will want to come to Latin America to compete,” he said. “We want Costa Rica to be able to host most than just one or two international tournaments, and this will help.”

Quiksilver's custom boardshort program taps brand heritage, technical expertise

Less than two days after I posted about Vans' new custom boardshort program through Shortomatic.com, the folks at boardsport behemoth Quiksilver fired off an email to let me know that they'd launched a similar program just a month and a half earlier.

And, at first glance, it looks stunningly similar.
Like Vans, Quiksilver's custom boardshorts are designed online, allow users to customize a handful choices (Quiksilver's version offers a dozen choices in all, including the left and right front and rear panels, waistband, pocket flap and embroidery color), a $99 price tag and an order-to-delivery time of two to three weeks.

Further, both versions are touted as being handmade right here in the good old U.S.A; Quiksilver's down in Huntington Beach, and the Vans/Shortomatic's in the Los Angeles area.

So when I got a chance to chat on the phone with Nicholas Nathanson, head of Quicksilver's custom boardshorts division, I asked if the dueling custom boardshort programs were the result of some sort of action-sports version of the space race. (In Hollywood, it's the kind of phenomenon that results in oddly concurrent dueling monkey-virus movies, "Snow White" remakes and Steve Prefontaine biopics.)

"Honestly, we learned about it from your blog post," Nathanson said. "We had no idea these guys were doing [a custom boardshort program]."

"It's an idea that's been percolating for 15 years ... We'd tried it in the past in a kind of primitive way, but the tool set just wasn't there."

According to Nathanson, Quicksilver finally pulled the trigger on the program, which launched on March 22, once it had worked out all the back-end logistics. He said the final piece of the puzzle was figuring out how to meld that Web-based shopping experience with Quiksilver's existing e-commerce efforts.

"We didn't want to develop a separate custom checkout," he explained. "Meaning that we wanted customers to be able to order a custom product and a non-custom one at the same time. Once we could do that, we knew we were ready."

Which brings up the differences -- and there are some big ones -- between Quiksilver's and Van's/Shortomatic's custom boardshort programs (beyond the obvious patterns, colors and artwork from each brand's archives).

Beyond the "all-in-one-shopping-cart" convenience (currently not an option with the Vans version), Quiksilver's website allows the user to create and share a boardshort design -- even one that doesn't end up being purchased -- by generating a code that can be shared via social media. (At Shortomatic.com, the custom Vans shorts live on in a gallery that scrolls across the bottom of the site.)

"We've sold a lot of boardshorts," Nathanson said, "but for every boardshort we've sold, there have been 50 designed by our customers that haven't been bought but shared with their friends [instead]."

Nathanson won't divulge specific sales numbers to date (which is not uncommon for a publicly traded company such as Quiksilver), but a company representative characterized the custom boardshorts as "selling three times better than any other [Quiksilver] product line."

And those with a less-than-svelte physique will be happy to know that Quiksilver's custom line can accommodate up to a 50-inch waist. ("We've envisioned the fact that there are athletes from Tahiti -- that are big dudes -- who will want to make their own boardshorts," Nathanson said.)

Currently the program offers a single style (based on the label's Cypher Kaimana silhouette) in a four-way stretch material (dubbed "Diamond Dobby"), but plans are to add new silhouettes and 15 new color and pattern choices over the next few months.

Which brings us to what Nathanson thinks is the biggest difference of all: "We're bringing our whole company's technical boardshort expertise to bear on this."

"No offense to their prowess, but we've been making boardshorts for 40 years, and they're outsourcing [their] boardshorts to someone who makes yoga mats," Nathanson said, taking a not-so-subtle swipe at Shortomatic, whose parent company, Anymatic, has its roots in the custom-printed yoga mat business. "It's a little different."

Sounds like the opening volley in a full-on battle of the custom boardies, no?