• Style/technique: Art nouveau Tube Line
• Manufacturer: Henry Richards
• Dimensions: 6" x 6"
• Date: circa 1910
 

• Condition: Good
• Price: £55 (approx $109)
• Ref: #03142

Condition Report

Four corners trimmed for the original fitting, a little scuffing near the left edge, few other very tiny marks. Perfectly clean and brilliant, shiny glazes.

 

A rather twee design but not at all a weak tile with the pleasant blue flowers and very deep olive green background.

Verso clean with embossed England and painted pattern number.

 

This is a genuine tube line tile, it is unfortunate that one has to stress genuine but increasingly tiles are being described as tube lined when they are moulded. This is widespread on eBay even from sellers who should know better, sellers who have more than one tile to compare, and many sellers do not revise their descriptions even when notified by other eBay members.

More unfortunately recent literature has confused the issue. Barnard and Lockett both make a single tube line error as far as I can recall, Austwick makes none, Fowler and Harvey several but the book is very poor anyway so should be discounted. Of more concern are Blanchett's volumes, very useful books and a lot of good information but therein several moulded tiles are described as tube lined. In the vast majority of cases it is a simple matter to determine if a tile is moulded or tube lined, some pointers can be found here.

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.

The image is full size at 72 dpi (about 430 pixels wide) in maximum quality JPEG format. Customers may request a larger 120 dpi image also in maximum quality PNg format for closer inspection which will be sent by email.