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Monday 25 January 2021

Spot the Frippet: imbrication.

 It's a pity, but I don't think there are any imbrications made of actual brick - though I suppose if you count a tile as a thin brick then they're all over the place:

illustration by Pearson Scott Foresman


You can see imbrications made of slate and shingles, too:


photo of shingles by Victorgrigas


(And you sometimes see tile imbrications on the walls of houses, too.)

You get imbrications in Nature:

Pearson Scott Foundation, as above

These scales, amazingly, are on a butterfly's feeler:

photo by Pavel Kejzlar

and you can even get fake imbrications, just to look pretty.

leather samples: photo by Serepsa 


The essential thing is that the scales/leaves/tiles/whatever they are overlap, or look as if they do.

So there we are: imbrications. A whole new way of filing the world!

Spot the Frippet: imbrication. This word comes from the Latin imbrex, which means pantile, which is an architectural tile with a curved edge. 

The word is nothing to do with our word brick.


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