Right Under Your Feet

摘要

THE TRATTORIA WAS NOTHING special, but its floor grabbed my attention. After a day strolling the Mediterranean beach and cobbled lanes of Italy's Sestri Levante, I was hunting for an aperitivo when I saw it-a decades-old composition of hexagonal tiles with a diamond pattern in three colors that created an illusory three-dimensional field of cubes. That such a graphic statement was present in a timeworn trattoria, where sandy shoes and sloshed Negronis ruled, was unexpected. But in Italy, a country that has a long history of producing dramatic tile, it usually doesn't take long to find inspiration underfoot. "In Italy, flooring is the most important element of the house," says Paolo Colucci, an interior designer based in Rome. "It's because tile production began very early, and Italians have always embraced it."