Description:
Square creamware tile, surface is splattered with multicolor brown and black slips. Condition: some chips to the edges of tile. Creamware tiles with this type of decoration are not often encountered.
Label Text:
Most tiles used in early America were imported English or Dutch delftware or tin-glazed earthenware. These tiles decorated fireplace jambs in addition to providing a cleanable surface. Unlike delftware tiles, creamware tiles are very rare and did not prove widely popular in the marketplace. The cream-colored surface proved a poor background for the more popular blue painted decoration. (A few blue painted creamware tiles exist – see Lois Roberts, Painted in Blue, p. 43.) Most extant creamware tiles were transfer printed with black enamel designs. This example has applied slip decoration which imitates the appearance of puddingstone, a popular name applied to a type of conglomerate rock that consists of distinctly rounded pebbles with sharply contrasting colors. Josiah Wedgwood had an early interest in making printed creamware tiles for fireplaces. Through his connections with the Liverpool printer John Sadler, Wedgwood was aware of the lucrative market for printed delftware tiles. In November 1762 he obtained through Sadler “apparatus for making tiles.” Presumably the idea was to make creamware blanks so that Sadler could print them. Wedgwood had difficulties locating experienced tile makers. Wedgwood did have success by 1776 in obtaining commissions from aristocratic patrons for dairy-tiles. Most of these were plain tiles surrounded by ones with a simple floral or leaf border. Although this tile cannot be positively attributed to Josiah Wedgwood, various slip-decorated creamware tiles more akin to the “puddingstone” tiles are located in the Wedgwood collection on the V&A’s collections website.
https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1744174/tile-josiah-wedgwood-and/
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2025.9 |
