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Very tiny or minute glaze chips to the tip of
the rim, surface is virtually flawless the only
marks being exceedingly minor and light. Very clean
and brilliant glazes. • Style/technique: Fleur de Lys tube
line A good fleur de lys design perhaps with a
touch of art nouveau, certainly made around the
peak of the art nouveau period. Five colours,
all highly translucent and extremely brilliant.
Rare, I can only recall two other tube lined
tiles by Gibbons Hinton. The fleur de lys is perhaps the most
ubiquitous of all historic designs being found
for millennia in cultures all around the world.
Its form is an essential symmetrical foliate
arrangement with one central and two side
leaves. Thousands of version of this pattern
have been created over the years and it has been
used to symbolise religion, monarchy and many
other groups and themes. There is perhaps a
little art nouveau in the design but being so
traditional it is difficult to say with
certainty. Most fascinating perhaps is that it
is done in tube line as moulded majolica fleur
de lys tiles were made around the same time,
perhaps done to enable the use of the most
brilliant, translucent glazes. Gibbons Hinton are one of the lesser known
companies but their tiles are almost always
super manufacturing quality and great designs
too. Owen Gibbons trained at the South
Kensington School of Art and was for a time
curator of the Royal Architectural Museum in
London before becoming head of the Coalbrookdale
School of Art in Shropshire. Whilst there he
designed a number of tiles for Maw & Co,
this may be one of his designs too. Verso quite clean a little smoke stain,
distinctive Gibbons Hinton locks. • Condition: Near perfect Some tiny touches of wear to the intersections
of the tube line, one simply doesn't see them. The
glazes are so brilliant viewed from almost any
angle that this really is a special tile to
behold. 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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