A legend is born: The history of Saltillo Tiles
The legendary Saltillo Tile was born more than 400 years ago when Spaniards conquered the North of Mexico. After the conquest, some Spaniards decided to stay behind and learned to live peacefully along with natives from the Tlaxcalteca and the Kikapú tribes. The natives and the spaniards shared their wisdom, their knowledge and their customs with each other.
Combining the use of natural clay (barro) from the natives and the construction techniques from the spaniards, the beautiful Saltillo Tiles were created for the very first time. Being people of tradition, natives kept the painstaking process alive generation after generation and haven't changed it ever since...
Creating the perfect floor tile... A painstaking process
The process begins with the careful selection of the most suitable clay mantles available.
To find these mantles, a team of trained men go out to the Sierra (desert mountains) and dig in different locations and perform several tests to find the most appropriate clay for making tiles.
Once the best spots are located, the digging begins and the clay is taken to production centers to start the cleaning process. The clay is washed several times and once clean, it is manually scoured and filtered to find rocks, pebbles or other impurities that may crack or chip the tiles. As you can imagine, going through a pile of clay with your hands to find rocks can take some time, but it is a necessary process if you want to create the best floor tiles in the world.
The clay is then set to rest and dry until it reaches the necessary consistency so the artisans can mold and give it the desired shape. The craftsmen manually shape tile by tile, leaving a part of themselves in every single piece they create; this makes each tile truly unique.
After each tile is shaped, it goes through a short ironing process and it is taken outdoors to dry out. It is during this drying process that sometimes animals (like birds, coyotes or snakes) go over the tiles and leave small prints... those tiles are very rare and many natives consider them to be "good luck charms" because mother nature got involved in the tile making process.
Once the tiles have reached a specific dehydration point, they are taken to classic
stonewall ovens where they are baked for hours. It is during the baking process that color changes happen on the tiles; the colors may vary from beige to pale yellow to pink or pale red.
After the tiles are fired in the kiln, the oven is unloaded with care and the tiles are taken outdoors again for a cooling process that lasts a couple of days. When the tiles are fully cooled, they are carefully examined one more time before they are packed and shipped to our warehouse in Laredo, Texas, from where they can be shipped to any place in the world...
The results are well worth the effort!
Even with such a complex process, the results are well worth it. And best of all, the price of Saltillo tiles is within budget for virtually every one of your building and interior decoration projects.
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