Tony Bomford's Hyperbolic Rugs

Tony Bomford (1927-2003) made a series of hooked rugs based on the Coxeter/M.C. Escher hyperbolic tiling patterns. He started the series in 1981.

You can find a useful biography and listing of the rugs (and further discussion) on Doug Dunham's pages as a series of PDF files (e.g. http://www.d.umn.edu/~ddunham/dunham04.pdf ).

Moorish-styled Tiles

'Granada' range tiles, FiredEarth.com

I think these tiles are absolutely gorgeous. They’re based on classic Moorish tiling artwork from Spain. If you know the Alhambra in Granada (widely regarded a representing the pinnacle of Islamic geometrical art), you’ll know roughly what to expect (M.C Escher made a pilgrimage to the Alhambra to study its designs before embarking on his series of famous tesselated artworks, and some of the Alhambra's designs also seem to show up in the work of Roger Penrose).

The borders between the smaller protruding glazed shapes are recessed and unglazed, so that each tile looks as if it's been assembled from a mosaic of smaller and more complicated tile shapes. It's a nice surface.

The Granada range of tiles is made in Spain and sold by Fired Earth. They also do other North African and Middle Eastern designs without the mosaic effect, like the Andalucia and Anatolia ranges.

(Thanks to Mark at FiredEarth Brighton for providing background info and letting me take the photos)