• Style/technique: Barbotine floral
• Manufacturer: Sherwin & Cotton
• Pattern numbers: B114 & B115
• Dimensions: 6" x 6"
• Date: circa 1888
• Colours: 6

 

A good pair of Sherwin & Cotton arts and crafts tiles handpainted in slip (barbotine) on handmade clay bodies. Natural colours, a colour textured background and brilliant glaze combine to create warm and friendly tiles despite their first impression which has a kind of atmospheric woodland feel to it.

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. Clean versos have standard Sherwin & Cotton Staffordshire Knot mark.

Barbotine is a process whereby moulded tiles may be hand made, the relief being built up by painting on the designs in coloured slip. It is not generally recognised how innovative barbotine tiles were, they didn't compete with typical moulded 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 even 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 - 1895 by which time many of the technological hinderances to the production of dust pressed 'modern majolica' tiles had been overcome although a few were made into the 20thC. Sherwin & Cotton made a speciality of the process and continued to make them in to the 20thC but art nouveau examples are extremely rare.

Versos very clean but a little plaster residue, with embossed typical rails and Staffordshire knot mark and incised pattern numbers.

These are thicker than typical and also heavier clay, each tiles weighs as much as one and a half typical tiles so shipping is slightly dearer than usual.

Condition: Very fine
Price: £155 (approx $300)
Ref: 02883 & 02883B

One tiny and two very tiny chips lower left edge, a few very light surface marks, excellent brilliance in the glaze.

Condition: Excellent

Half a dozen tiny and very tiny edge/corner chips, small flake has lifted from a tip of the central leaf, very few very light surface marks, excellent brilliance in the glaze.

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.