Joan Moliner is a personal inspiration. He lives in Barcelona, Spain and witnessed old tiles from apartment block renovations just being dumped in skips and so he decided to save them. This was seven years ago and he has now collected thousands. However he is not, as you might expect, a dealer he just loves old tiles.
 
The tiles were handmade in the 19th Century from Portland cement with patterns often designed by local Catalan artists. These beautiful decorative tiles are in fact part of Barcelona's heritage and Joan especially loves the personal memories they bring. For him, 'every tile tells a story' and many would completely agree it is a huge waste not to reuse them.
 
Joan is now hoping to collaborate with a disabled centre to frame and maybe sell the tiles. So he is a huge inspiration and has shown that we could all help save our own heritage and encourage reuse. In fact now with climate change setting new priorities for government policy worldwide, how can we justify crushing or sending these lovely old tiles to landfill instead of saving them for future reuse? Now must be the time to change.
 
I recently visited an Italian restaurant in West London with similar old tiles beautifully displayed in a frame on the wall and also individual ones inset on their tables which were reused from an old pizza oven. See the image shown.
 
And of course old antique and reclaimed tiles can always to be found for sale on Salvo the worldwide online marketplace to be reused for flooring, walls, fireplaces or simply decoration.
 
Read the Guardian article at the link below it makes fascinating story.