- Style/technique: Seasons/Landscapes Hand
Painted
- Manufacturer: The Decorative Art Tile
Co
- Dimensions: 6" x 12" each tile
- Date: circa 1895
An excellent pair of hand painted pictures,
landscapes representing the seasons spring and
summer each with a swan upon a meandering river.
Well decorated overglaze and well fired and with
none of the often found flaws with overglaze
decoration, each named and signed with the
initials HH.
These are genuinely handpainted tiles showng
the skill of the artist, painted without the use
of an outline there would have been drawings in
the pattern book for the guidance of the artist
rather than a pounced or traced outline to
follow. It is little known that most of the hand
painted tiles were in fact rather more painting
by numbers than hand painting even William de
Morgan traced and painted on to transfer paper
which was then applied to tile. We see a pair of
these every few years, I have probably seen half
a dozen or so pairs, for sure two different
artists painted them, likely more, each is an
individual and unique work of art with
differences such as the positions of the swans
and the line of the river and of course in the
grass and foliage. This pair are especially nice
examples with warm natural colouring.
Such 6" x 12" tiles were most often used as
the centrepieces of fireplace panels both
slabbed and in cast iron but they are also found
framed as pictures. They were expensive each
tile costing roughly the same as a pair of
tinted print five-tile panels or a dozen tinted
print 6" x 6", a pair cost about a week and a
half's wages of a typical pottery worker. These
were in modern frames when bought but apparently
were always framed for the versos are very clean
and the tiles show no signs of fireplace use.
Versos unmarked generic grid probably
Woolliscroft.
Condition: Excellent
Price: £440 (approx $641)
Ref: 03869/70
