Arts & Crafts Barbotine Tile
Style/technique: Arts & crafts barbotine Manufacturer: Sherwin & Cotton Pattern number: RMB116 Dimensions: 6" x 6" Date: circa 1885 - 90 Colours: 7   A very pleasing barbotine design which near fills the tile entirely handmade and decorated. Natural colours, a colour textured background and brilliant glaze combine to create a warm and friendly tile. The body is of buff plastic clay and a little thicker than usual, the use of plastic clay indicating the tile was made before materials technology improved sufficiently to reliably make barbotine tiles on dust pressed bodies. Verso has a standard Sherwin & Cotton Staffordshire Knot mark with the incised pattern number B116. Barbotine is a process whereby embossed tiles may be hand made, the relief being created by painting the designs in coloured slip. It is not generally recognised how innovative barbotine tiles were, they didn't compete with usual lead glaze majolica tiles they predated them. Prior to their advent there were essentially only three types of tiles available, printed and painted flat tiles and 'original majolica' in opaque glazes, when these hit the market around 1885 they were totally new and startlingly different to all other offerings at the time. Other manufacturers tried to copy them using mechanical processes, ie moulded 'modern majolica' but it took a few years of pretty poor efforts before reasonable quality and a range of colours equal to barbotine was achieved. Colours for the barbotine process were limited too, partly because clay fires at a higher temperatues than glaze so less stable colours burn off, nevertheless what appears to us today to be a limited range of colours it wasn't so in 1885. It is presumed that the vast majority of barbotine tiles were made in the period 1885 - 1890 by which time many of the technological hinderances to the production of dust pressed 'modern majolica' tiles had been overcome.
Condition: Excellent Price: £70 (approx $138) Ref no: 01082  The top edge has two very small chips, there are very small chips on the top corners and one tiny one on the bottom edge. There is a little staining near the left edge, some light rubbing to high spots and other very minor surface marks. Super brilliance in the glaze. UK Special Delivery £78 US and World Airsure £85 Full order Information Contact us Currency Converter
The image is full size at 72 dpi (about 430 pixels wide) in maximum quality JPEG format. 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. To see current dollar price and convert price to other currencies try this Universal Currency Converter.

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