Modern porcelain imitations are cheaper, easier to maintain and more resistant to staining. They do not require sealing and, for most households, will probably outlast the average period people now own a property. If practicality alone decided such matters, porcelain would win without difficulty.

Yet people continue to choose encaustic tiles.

As the surface wears, the image remains. Even heavily worn Victorian floors can often be restored because the decoration and the material are one and the same thing. The tile was made with the assumption that somebody, someday, might repair it.

Modern products are often designed around replacement. Traditional materials were frequently designed around maintenance. One asks how cheaply something can be replaced. The other asks how long it can remain.

Neither approach is wrong. They simply answer different questions.

After all, mechanical watches survive despite quartz movements being more accurate. Solid timber continues to be chosen although engineered boards are more stable. People still buy paper books despite owning tablets.

I suspect encaustic tiles belong to this category. Their appeal is not merely aesthetic. They belong to a world that expected permanence. The people who installed them were not planning to replace the floor in twenty years. In many cases, they expected never to replace it at all.

The floor became part of the house itself.

In this sense, encaustic tiles belong to a different understanding of time. The work is done once, maintained when necessary and eventually inherited by people who had no part in the original decision.

Modern porcelain imitations are excellent products and I install them regularly. They solve many practical problems and, for most people, they are probably the sensible choice.

But they belong to a different tradition.

Perhaps this is why some people continue to choose them despite the inconvenience. Human beings have always lived partly by usefulness and partly by meaning.