Dezeen promotion: ceramics brand Mutina has teamed up with Dutch designer Hella Jongerius to produce a range of tonal tiles.

The idea for the Diarama collection emerged after Mutina developed an interest in chromatics, and how colour can affect the appearance of ceramics.

Keen to create a range of tiles in an unprecedented selection of shades, the Italy-based brand decided to collaborate with designer Hella Jongerius.

Jongerius is widely recognised for her experimental work with colour – last year she put on an exhibition at London's Design Museum that encouraged designers and consumers to find alternatives to industrially produced paints and dyes. She also created a rainbow-hued installation inside CasaVitra at Milan Design Week 2016.

The designer – who graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven in the early 90s – has been director of colour and materials for Vitra since 2007, and is also design director for textile company Danskina.

"Mutina pursues its colour research with Hella Jongerius, who has studied it in all its forms," said Massimo Orsini, the brand's CEO.

"[It's] a collection born of a spontaneous approach pointed to chromatic development and shade spectrum – [it's] a colour project, further than a design one."

The collection is divided into three sub-categories. The first, Diarama Colors, has tiles available in shades ranging from murky green, to burnt orange and sky blue. This is followed by Diaroma Black & White, which is exclusively monochromatic.

The last, Diarama Mix, features tiles where a coloured glaze has been applied to a black or grey base to create an overall more muted aesthetic.

"I've been using tiles like canvas, to see what happened if you had different bodies of coloured clays and you put glazes on the top of them," explained Jongerius.

"So that the utter surface doesn't look simply coloured, but mixed like an oil painting."

No stranger to collaborations, Mutina has previously teamed up with designers including the Bouroullec brothers, Konstantin Grcic, Inga Sempé, Barber & Osgerby, and Raw Edges. Most recently the brand joined forces with Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola, who they first began working with in 2008, to create a line of tiles embossed with subtle cross-hatch and dot patterns.

To find out more about the Diaroma collection, visit its website.