Collectable Tiles

Greco-Roman Block Print Tile

Style/technique: Palmette print
Manufacturer: Minton Hollins
Dimensions: 6" x 6"
Date: circa 1870

Condition: Very fine
Price: £80 (approx $148)
Ref: #02764

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Condition report.

About an inch of roughness on the tip of the bottom edge near the left corner, a few very tiny/minute edge chips, some minor printing imperfections. Surface condition is superb and the glaze has outstanding brilliance.

A bold design of a genre popular during the arts & crafts movement period block printed in chocolate on buff. One of the oldest designs one is likely to see on a victorian tile with the exception perhaps of the fleur de lys its use recordeded for millenia. This exact design and many similar were more famously made by Mintons China Works in the 1870s and 1880s and often erroneously attributed to Christopher Dresser or alternatively under the pressure to attribute to a famous victorian designer Owen Jones. They were made in moulded majolica by Minton & Co/Minton Hollins and printed in a variety of colours by them, Mintons China Works and others. The form is of the anthemion or palmette an ancient egyptian-greco-roman palm or shell-like design consistent with the arts & crafts movement use of ancient design themes.
Minton Hollins most likely were the originators of the pattern on tile with the caveats as in the following paragraph. Mintons China Works copied many designs from Hollins and others and judging by what we see produced far more of these than Minton Hollins indeed this Hollins example is quite rare and an interesting tile for the collector of the genre and the Minton companies.

Anthemion is from the greek for flower and the form is variously attributed to papyrus, palm, acanthus and honeysuckle as the original inspiration but this is so far back in the sands of time (ancient Egypt!) that really most likely is that the variations were representative of different flora and coalesced into this standard form. Clam shells, nautilus shells and ammonites have also been popular design subjects from time immemorial as all early populations lived close to water supplies many near the sea shore and variations of the anthemion design very much clam shell like in form were also popular throughout history.

There are perhaps a couple of dozen examples of anthemion designs in The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones, approximately half being of the simple form as this tile. Jones makes no claim to authorship of the designs rather he says that they are "Ornaments from Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum and the Louvre". Furthermore Jones states that "....the drawings have been chiefly executed by my pupils Mr Albert Warren and Mr Charles Aubert...."

The volume contains but a single plate of designs by Dresser in the Leaves and Flowers from Nature section. The most singular plate in the volume in that for the most part the designs are stylised by symmetry and geometry but at no time so removed from nature that the source can not be quickly recognised.

Very clean verso with usual grid and text.

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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