A fabulous pair of arts & crafts
tiles, entirely hand decorated on a
hand made biscuit and of totally
exceptional quality throughout.
Fabulously handpainted in a good range
of brilliant glaze colours on the best
handmade biscuit I have ever seen. Six
glaze colours (at least) and fully
handpainted. These are very rare, very
difficult to manufacture, very
expensive to manufacture tiles so rare
that even the most enthusiastic
collector may never have seen their
like.
When viewing images on a screen they
all look similar in as much as screens
emit light whereas objects reflect
light the differences in quality of the
surface are therefore misrepresented or
not apparent at all. For example it is
difficult to see the difference between
a translucent glaze and an opaque glaze
onscreen. The image on screen is
static, when viewing an object in the
hand one naturally moves position a
little (of oneself or the object) thuse
gaining perspective and adding to the
viewing pleasure, onscreen shifting
position will not add to the visual
input if anything will detract as most
screens image reproduction capabilities
diminish when viewed at an angle.
Due to the limitations of onscreen
viewing we automatically make
assumptions, we compare the image to
similar objects that we have seen in
real life and make our judgment. These
tiles produce an immediate like de
Morgan' reaction due to the full design
and its free interpretation however Wm
de Morgan & Co never produced any
tiles by this technique, put these
amongst a collection of de Morgan tiles
and they will shine out for rather than
being underglaze painted and covered
with a flat glaze these are hand
painted in glazes which is a
tremendously difficult technique and
requires incredible technical as well
as artistic skills.
Very few tile makers decorated in
hand painted glazes it was the most
demanding of techniques. Glazes of
course melt in the kiln and run
together at times forming an unsightly
mess hence the popularity of
cloisonné, other moulding
effects and tubeline techniques to keep
the glazes separate. All conditions had
to be perfect to produce glaze painted
tiles, the materials technology of the
glazes, the skill of the artist, the
skill of the kilnmaster. Such tiles
were amongst the most expensive of all
around the turn of the century.
Glaze colours tended to run in to
each other and so the range of colours
used for this and similar techniques is
limited by the qualities of the glazes.
Usually limited to earth colours these
tiles have a great range from the blue
background, at least two greens, two
golden browns and pink. With all the
colours in the glazes which are highly
translucent they look even better in
direct light, in sunlight they are
totally amazing, I am sure they would
have looked nearly as brilliant in
firelight.
Few companies are recorded as using
the glaze painting technique, Maw &
Co., Sherwin & Cotton, Craven
Dunnill, Richards, Marsden and Wedgwood
the latter whilst Marsden was engaged
there. Most use a transfer printed
outline rather than the hand painted
outline used here, of course many
companies glaze painted with moulded,
tubelined or slip-trailed outlines. One
of the first reactions is "William de
Morgan" yet these tiles surpass many of
the attributes of de Morgan tiles. De
Morgan never painted in glazes, far too
difficult, the company painted
underglaze often using transfer, the
biscuit is of high quality fireclay,
not de Morgan's poor if actually
fireclay.
Verso completely plain save for
number in pencil indicating the
position on the slab. A very high
quality fireclay, exceptional in my
experience, finely ground and without
the lumpy grog associated with fireclay
tiles.
[1] Catleugh reports de
Morgan painting on to transfer papers
page 142.
[2] Barnard reports de Morgan
transfers were painted in Italy on page
122.
