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Tile panel with dragon-bird grotesques
Maker:
William De Morgan & Co.
Designer:
De Morgan, William Frend
Tile panel comprising twenty earthenware tiles, each slip-coated, glazed and painted in ruby lustre. Six central tiles forming a repeat pattern of dragon-bird grotesques and foliage. Ten rectangular border tiles with flowing flower and leaf pattern. Four square corner tiles each with a flower. All painted in ruby lustre on a ground of white slip. The lustre has been fired to different depths of colour, in general the larger central tiles being darker than the border.
History note: Given by H.C.Mossop, 1941
Given by H.C.Mossop, 1941
Method of acquisition: Given (1941-03-26) by Mossop, H. C.
19th Century, Late#
Circa
1888
CE
-
1898
CE
William Frend De Morgan (1839-1917), now widely regarded as the most important ceramicist of the Arts & Crafts movement, also worked in stained glass and became a successful novelist. The son of a non-conformist mathematics professor, he became a close friend of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones and married the Pre-Raphaelite painter Evelyn Pickering (1855-1919), in 1887. As a ceramicist, De Morgan was primarily a designer/decorator and chemist, working on bought-in blanks or pots thrown to his design. He experimented widely with techniques and glazes, re-discovering methods for making and applying lustres and the colours of Iznik pottery and using them for a range of complex fantasy designs featuring ships, birds, flora and animals. De Morgan made many, many designs for tiles and tile panels – some 820 are in the V&A collection. His early work was produced on industrially-made blanks, notably from Wedgwood and from the Architectural Pottery Co., Poole. Although hand-made tiles were later made in-house he continued to use bought-in glazed tiles for standard designs in lustre which sometimes lead to uneven copper lustre effects, as in this panel. The central design (which is made from two tile designs, reversed and repeated) , in blue, is in the V&A collection: E.529-1917, box 105B. The border design is also found on other tile panels. The V&A designs suggest the panel was made when De Morgan operated from Sands End, Fulham, from 1888-98. A contemporary price list includes he sold another 8x24 inch tile panel for 42/- (two pounds two shillings).
Decoration
composed of
lustre
Front
composed of
glaze
slip
Long Border Tiles
Length 15.25 cm
Width 5.1 cm
Central Tiles
Square 15.25 cm
Corner Tiles
Square 5.1 cm
Dust-pressing : Industrially-produced, dust-pressedwhite earthenware, slip-coated and lustred
Inscription present: on large tiles
Inscription present: on all tiles
Inscription present: on long border tiles
Accession number: EC.4-1941
Primary reference Number: 15314
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
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IIIF Manifest
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Tile panel with dragon-bird grotesques" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/15314 Accessed: 2024-11-21 15:02:56
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{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/15314
|title=Tile panel with dragon-bird grotesques
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-21 15:02:56|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<figure class="figure">
<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa19/EC_4_1941_282_29.jpg"
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