Condition: Very good Chip bottom corner and a few very tiny rim
chips, one very short scratch otherwise perfect
surface. Style/technique: Gothic arts
& crafts A true arts and crafts decorated tile
entirely handpainted and with a small group to
compare can say unequivocally freehand painted
without use of a stencil or other guide. A
simple gothic fleur de lis like design in the
medieval taste with a painted outline in warm
brown and the background washed with deep olive
green. The biscuit has an oatmeal texture
colouring with different ingredients and
probably relatively fine grog in the clay which
although dust pressed maintains the arts &
crafts feel. We purchased a few dozen tiles in total from
the same building in Windsor and there is quite
a unique feel to them. They appear to be made
deliberately to appear archaic with
imperfections being intended to add to the
authenticity. I have certainly seen tiles by
Copeland deliberately made as replicas perhaps
to repair as in a 19thC restoration of an
earlier building and these have that same aura
of replica rather than reproduction or copy. The
tips of the edges are uneven deliberately in
manufacture and in the nature of the clay used,
the colour and glaze does not always properly
reach the edge and there is little spill of the
colour or glaze down the side edges, these are
all not defects but are clearly intended in
manufacture. The design being offset or diagonal may have
been intended to be fixed diagonally or perhaps
as a group of four the design radiating from the
centre or even as a border alternating to left
hand and right hand. When displayed for
collectors or as a feature tile set diagonally
there is an optical illusion in terms of size
the tile looks larger than six inch indeed
comparable to an eight inch tile square on.
Briefly this is because our eyes scan the
horizontal as the primary dimension, the world
is horizontal, it soon runs out when one looks
up, and our eyes are set side by side rather
than one above the other. With this effect
offset designs can fill more space whether
displayed on a wall or set in to a
splashback. The biscuit marked Doulton & Co Lambeth
is not believed to have been made by them but
for them perhaps by Webbs of Worcester or George
Marsden and is very similar to that often used
by Wedgwood who again appear to have bought in
most if not all of their biscuit and tiles.
There is no record of Doulton manufacturing any
tiles indeed Doulton are known to have had
trading relationships with several major
tilemakers of the day as one would expect they
being major sanitaryware manufacturers and
installers. Doulton became well known as tile
decorators and for art pottery following the
establishment of a studio at the Lambeth pottery
in 1871. Handwritten although faded there is 175
presumably the pattern number and artist's
initials EM. Another of these has 1/6 written in
pencil in the script style of the times, another
tile of a different pattern from the same source
also has a handwritten price of 2/-. These will
be the prices per tile being far too low for a
dozen or yard the other ways that tiles were
priced and are about what one would expect being
2 - 3 times the price of a typical Staffordshire
tinted print tile and a little more than half of
the price of a Wm de Morgan handpainted
tile. In good condition overall the glaze surface
being absolutely super. There is some chipping
to and around the bottom corner and a tiny chip
at the top corner, other minute marks to the rim
are both in manufacturing and subsequent so
impossible and unimportant to suggest when and
how. The image is full size at 72 dpi (about 430
pixels wide) in maximum quality JPEG format and on
screen is about the size as it would be in real
life at the same distance. A larger 120 dpi image
also in maximum quality JPEG format can be
forwarded by email if required. The image is a little oversize rather than
cropped close to the edges so that the edges can
easily be seen and any chips etc can be quickly
spotted. Other marks described are usually not
visible at all when the tile is viewed straight as
one normally sees it and can only be seen with a
critical eye when the tile is tilted to catch
imperfections in reflected light. For more details
of how we describe marks see Condition.
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