Years ago I traveled to Portugal and Spain, a part of the world I’ve always felt drawn to thanks to my Puerto Rican roots. The Portuguese coastal town of Porto was one of my stops, and some of my favorite memories include a home-cooked meal of seafood caught earlier that day, ancient houses stacked endlessly on top of each along the hillside, and the azulejos —hand-painted blue and white tiles— decorating the facade of almost every building.
Image credit, clockwise from top left: Building facade with balconies via What If We Walked; single tile via the Os Azulejos do Porto Project; Building corner via Pinterest; tiles in shades of blue via Pinterest; blue and taupe tiles via Quatre Fleurs.
I wanted to hold on to a tiny part of this trip and designed this collection as a reminder of the endless patterns and shapes of azulejo tiles: scrolling designs that, when laid next to each other, create even larger patterns.
For the Porto collection, I pulled from these tiles to create repeating diamond-like shapes out of 14k gold. To mimic the look of layered blue glazes I used stones in shades of blue —deep London blue topaz and bright sky blue topaz— and accented them with glittering white diamonds.
This collection is a personal reminder for me of those dreamy days in Portugal, and I hope it helps you imagine yourself nibbling on a pastéis de nata under a centuries-old tiled mural.