William de Morgan BBB Tile
Style/technique: Arts & Crafts handpainted Manufacturer: William de Morgan Dimensions: 6" x 6" Date: circa 1885   A particularly fine and earlier example of the noted de Morgan tile known as BBB because it was made for the artistic ironfounders Barnard, Bishop and Barnard of Norwich. In good colour, eight colours in all which is rare, and with a rich purple heart to the flower. One of the better examples for manufacturing quality being very nearly perfectly square, crisply painted, bright and colourful and with better detail and shading than most examples. There is a tendency to standardise designs, it is a BBB, it is a K L Rose etc, but the range of qualities is very wide as one indeed may expect for hand decorated wares. Compare the shading of the leaves, the sharpness of the petal points, how the striations on the petals are denser yet fade smoothly towards their tips, even the purple semicircles in the flower centre are more numerous than on lesser examples of the design, the only painting imperfection is a single extraneous spot of brown. This was certainly painted by one of the better painters at William de Morgan & Co and will stand out as a fine piece amongst examples in most collections. Good clean verso Merton Abbey period mark, 1882 - 1888, this being a quality item probably earlier in the date range. Noted in the literature, Lockett has a lustre version on page 73 and Catleugh has a drawing on page 80 and it is pictured in the Morris & Co catalogue sheet on page 41.
Condition: Excellent Price: £625 (approx $1240) Ref: #02186 Edges are perfect apart from a minute chip about an inch up from the bottom of the right side (the white dot on the leaf), a three inch long scratch just below the top edge, a tiny rust spot near the bottom left corner, a few other extremely light surface marks, invisible unless the tile is held just so catch them to the light. Very clean with great colour and brilliance.  UK Special Delivery £633 US and World Airsure £640 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.

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