A pile of tile

The artsy organized neighbor collects used terra cotta tiles. This one is square; it may be a roof tile but I'm not sure. The tile face is quite fancy and incorporates the name of the manufacturer in its design: la Grande Tuilerie Mécanique de Plagny-près-Nevers. I can't find out much about that place on the internet, so I think it may no longer exist.

Plagny is a community just south of the city of Nevers and is about a two-hour drive from Saint-Aignan.

Tuilerie is the word for tile manufactory. The Tuileries Gardens (and former palace) in Paris are built on the site of an old tile works. Tuiles mécaniques are a special kind of interlocking roof tiles. The tiles on our very own roof are mécaniques, but they don't look at all like this; they're big and rectangular and very dark brown, and probably about the same age as the house (50 years). I learned what they are called and how they work when we needed to have some roofing repairs done a number of years ago. There's nothing mechanical about the tiles; that word refers to the nineteenth century automation of the process for making them.