Description:
Large, industrial made, square tile, decorated with overglaze enamels in polychrome colors of brown, green, black, and gray; the tile is painted with an image of a large brown mushroom, with some green leaves on either side, on the ground is some leaf litter, at the side are the initials in black, "MGN" and at the bottom is the inscription, "Boletus ornatipes"; on the reverse side there are molded stamps for "MOSAIC" in an oval, "150" in four blocks, and "B672" in four blocks and "MADE IN AMERICA"; there is also an inscription in black, "NORMAN/CERAMICS/ OLD DEERFIELD/ "Boletus ornatipes" The Mosaic Tile Company was started by Herman C. Mueller (1854-1941), a German-born artist and scuplture and chemist Karl Langenbeck who left the American Encaustic Tiling Company in 1894 in Zanesville, Ohio (later a second location in Matawan, New Jersey). Many types of plain and ornamental tiles were made until 1959; the company stopped production in 1967. This object was decorated by Marcia Gaylord Norman, the wife of Edward "Ted" Norman, who worked as potters at the Bloody Brook Tavern in Deerfield, Massachusetts, in the 1930s - 1950's. Marcia specialized in the production of tiles and eventually illlustrated many books on birds and wildlife of Cape Cod. These tiles were found in the Allen House and may have been purchased and used by the Flynts.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2016.806.6 |
