Tessellation

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Dear Max and Dominic,

The week before last we went to a town in Spain called Seville because I was booked to go to a conference about how to help older people with brain problems to get better. Have you got the postcards I sent you yet?

Seville is famous for all kinds of things but something that you see absolutely everywhere is tessellated patterns. Max knows all about tessellation and has even practised making tessellated designs with Nan and Grandad's spirograph, but you might not know what it means, Dominic. Tessellation means joining small simple shapes together to make big repeating patterns, without any gaps. It's fun!

Have a look at some of the tessellations we saw. Most of these pictures are from the old royal palace in the middle of Seville. These tessellations were made hundreds of years ago when artists from Africa met artists from Europe (Spain was kind of in the middle back then). They're pretty amazing.

After you see two or three thousand tessellations, you really need to take a break. The last picture is of my favourite plaza to relax in - it has a fountain, orange trees (the oranges weren't quite ripe yet) and cafes so you can sit down and recover. Except hang on, aren't trees made up of repeating patterns too ...?

I can't escape patterns anywhere!

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