Friday, July 22, 2011

Colorful Kawara

fuk7014

The original kawara, rooftiles, in Japan were I believe black, as are most of them nowadays. You can find a few bright blue examples which are traditional Chinese I believe.

gotsu590

Most of the tiles in my area are a reddish-brown which seems fairly common in the west of Japan, but nowadays you can get them in just about any color. These were on display outside a local tile factory that has now gone out of business.

gotsu591

There actually seems to be more colors available for rooftiles than there are for housepaint. Houses usually are painted in a very small range of colors.

A drive to Ato 6851


omori7635


lilly8538

5 comments:

  1. Simply breathtaking, Japan's taste for beauty is displayed everywhere. I wonder why the tile factory could have run out of business, though.
    Have a colorful weekend, ciao!

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  2. There are some beautiful and vibrant colours in the photographs, though I haven't seen that many examples of multi-coloured roofs. Perhaps that's because modern houses tend not to use kawara. Could this herald the revival of the use of kawara in modern architecture, more for aesthetic purposes than for practical ends?

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  3. Wow. They're definitely a thing of beauty, like the scales of exotic fish - especially the fourth and last fish. It's a shame that the factory is out of business... what a waste of beautiful materials.

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