• Style/technique: Art Nouveau tube lined
• Manufacturer: Sherwin & Cotton*
• Dimensions: 3" x 6"
• Date: circa 1908
• Colours: 4

A fabulous tube line tile in brilliant glazes on a plastic clay fireclay body. Brilliant glazes and bold tubeline the body perhaps deliberately inexact to create that arts & crafts feel. Sherwin & Cotton were the most artistic large tile maker and employed a wider variety of decorating techniques including distressing the tile surface prior to decorating.

Verso is very clean and unmarked due to being ground to remove really tough mortar.

• Condition: Very fine
• Price: £120 (approx $235)
• Ref: 02898

Slender slice chip top left corner about half an inch long and just a fraction of an inch wide otherwise perfect.

Blanchett has one of these illustrated and attributed to Jeffrey and a rather later date. I have another of these in my personal collection which has an impressed mark of Sherwin's double triangle but the knot is indistinct however when compared to other Sherwin fireclay tiles it is so similar that the attribution is 99% certain. The mark is little like that of Jeffrey apart from the triangular shape.

The mark on a similar tile from same source magnified about 4x

The image is full size at 72 dpi (about 220 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.