Moa starts the tile making process by putting coloured cement into a stencil.
PICTURES / PAUL BROOKS
Moa starts the tile making process by putting coloured cement into a stencil.
PICTURES / PAUL BROOKS
Mohamed Belkouadssi makes cement tiles. His is not a name that trips lightly off the Kiwi tongue, which probably explains why the Whanganui artisan, originally from Marrakesh, Morocco, calls himself Moa, and his business, Moabell Design.
He started calling himself Moa long before he came to New Zealand, and, at thetime, had not heard of the extinct, flightless bird. He was living and working in Spain at the time and the Spanish pronunciation of Mohamed was hard on the ear. When he met his New Zealand partner, Catherine Sleyer, she explained the significance of his sobriquet.
Moa lived in Barcelona for about 20 years, after leaving Marrakesh in 1989 to seek a better life. He originally intended to join some student friends in Italy but stopped in Barcelona and stayed, working in construction. "Barcelona was preparing for the Olympic Games so there was a lot of work there," he says.
His interest in tiles comes from his childhood in Morocco, and in his work in Barcelona he saw a lot of beautiful tile patterns. "In Barcelona, in the 19th century, there were four or five houses making tiles in competition (with each other). It was the time of art nouveau in Catalonia and there were lots of designers and artists designing tiles for them." His home in Spain was more than a century old and the patterned tiles were as fresh as new.
While Moa makes some of his own designs, he also uses patterns from catalogues he has collected in his travels. He makes cement tiles in a process called encaustic or hydraulic. Each tile is made individually in a single mould, one tile at a time, and his patterns are created using zinc stencils he has created himself, by hand, out of necessity. There are hundreds of them, from the simple but effective, to the elaborate and intricate.
The tile making technique he uses originated in the south of France with the discovery of portland cement, and was swiftly picked up by craftsmen and designers in Catalonia. Moa is the only hydraulic cement tile maker in New Zealand, making European tiles in Whanganui. There are distributors importing from Europe and Asia, but Moa is the sole maker in this country.
He says with the advent of terrazzo and ceramic tiles, the cement tile lost favour and, in some places, disappeared. He sees his work as a revival of the technique. "In countries like Morocco, South America and Vietnam, people are still making these tiles." The patterns — and the tiles — are extremely hard-wearing and are suitable for indoor or outdoor use.
Moa makes the tiles upside down, starting with the pattern, using one of his many stencils to separate the colours. Fine cement and coloured oxides create the hues. He uses about 25 colours. The consistency of the coloured cements are exactly alike, so when the stencil is removed, the still liquid colours stay precisely in position. He fixes the colours with a mixture of dry cement and sand, heavy on the cement. The third layer is a different mix and slightly damp. A hydraulic press completes the first part of the process. The tile, by now able to be handled, is left to dry before being cured in water and dried again.
