Cuban tile isn't encaustic, it's cement. It's not really cement either, it's concrete.
For so long as I've lived in Florida, I've been enamored with what's known in those elements as Cuban tile. Cuban tile become all the rage in Florida from the turn of the remaining century up until the Fifties. The embargo against Cuba pretty much sealed its fate as a misplaced material until pretty lately.
I live in an vintage community and this house is down the road from me.
Wild as it's miles, all that Mission-style mish mash and stucco is original and that residence is ready 70 years antique. The the front porch had been closed in in some unspecified time in the future after the arrival of aircon, but if you look within the door you could see what's at the ground in there.
It's an authentic Cuban tile floor.
I've written about Cuban tile before though it's been quite a while. All this time, I've been using the terms Cuban tile, encaustic tile and cement tile interchangeably but it's come to my attention recently that encaustic and cement tiles are very different things and to split the hair even finer, cement tile's more accurately called concrete tile. Zoe Voigt, a writer and great friend of this blog, explains the differences thoroughly in an article called The Difference between Encaustic and Cement on Tile Style.
In the comments that follow Zoe's post, Richard Holdshuh explains that cement tile isn't really cement after all. It's concrete. Richard's opinion is backed up in a follow up comment left by Jorge Aguayo of Industrias Aguayo .
Industrias Aguayo is one the world's few manufacturers of concrete tile. From their factory in the Dominican Republic, Aguayo keeps alive the Cuban tradition through a concrete tile series they call Herencia Cubana. That's Cuban Heritage in English.
Bill Buyok, another friend and occasional contributor to this blog , happens to sell Aguayo's Herencia Cubana from his fashionable shop, Avente Tile, on Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills . I think we can safely call it Cuban Tile 90210.
Bill's Flickr stream is where I got these images of traditional Cuban patterns that are back in production and readily available.
So the subsequent time a person asks, Cuban tile is cement tile and now not encaustic tile. And it is not without a doubt cement tile both, it's concrete. Got that?