Tuesday 22 April 2008

Those day-to-day wall tiles

A new genre for this site and I think a slightly unlikely one, but here it is...

Entrance tiles.

With so many late-victorian and early-edwardian houses in the patch it is not surprising to find quite so many doorway/hallway entrance tiles.

They are all around but often you just don't really notice them. Having lived for a time in Stoke-on-Trent I have a small understanding of just what was involved in both effort, skill and scale in the production of these.

But also the designs and the colourings are so so rich and varied.

I have captured a small crop here on the theme of green and brown and am now on the hunt for the more flamboyant and colourful... but as a local feature they do look great.

There are others much much more specialised in this field: http://www.derbycity.com/michael/tiles.html
http://www.derbycity.com/michael/aesthet.html
http://www.derbycity.com/michael/gothic.html

The tiles I have shown above of course are glazed wall tiles - I.e. not suitable for floor tiles and there is a whole firing process involved. I had a tour round a factory a few years back that was still doing tile glazing in a traditional way - it was a real education and totally fascinating.

And of course the modern copies are widely available:
http://www.eurocosm.com/Application/Products/Reproduction-Tiles/Victorian-Tiles-GB.asp

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