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Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (2)
Maker:
William De Morgan & Co.
Designer:
De Morgan, William Frend
Square, buff, earthenware tile, covered in cream slip, decorated with transfer pattern in blue-black, purple-brown, yellow and shades of green, and glazed. An all-over naturalistic pattern of green leaves, with a diagonal leading stem and four yellow petal, purple-brown centre, daisies. Two of the daisies are shown from the side, with petals bent back. The design is outlined in blue-black, which has smudged in places; the resulting blurred effect is enhanced by a somewhat heavy clear glaze. The tile is thick and the earthenware coarse. There are wide stripes of glaze across the back.
History note: Given by Mr H C Mossop, 1941
Given by Mr H C Mossop, 1941
Width: 20.4 cm
Width: 8 in
Method of acquisition: Given (1941-03-26) by Mossop, H. C.
19th Century, Late#
1882
CE
-
1888
CE
This tile dates from 1882-88, when De Morgan’s workshop was at Merton Abbey, next door to Morris’s factory. The coarse earthenware and rough sides indicate that the tile was intended for a fireplace or other architectural use. The flowing naturalism suggests it is an early design, perhaps influenced by Morris’s work; De Morgan’s later tile designs were more stylised and symmetrical. He made many, many designs for tiles and tile panels – some 820, including this one, are in the V&A collection – and transferred them using his own innovative transfer method which allowed repeats to be made whilst preserving a ‘hand-made’ quality. There are two tiles of this design in the Fitzwilliam collection, which illustrate the experimental nature of De Morgan’s work. Here the transfer design has blurred; it has been more successfully applied on the other example (C.8-1941).
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 and Persian pottery and using them for a range of complex fantasy designs featuring ships, birds, flora and animals. This tile has been produced using De Morgan’s invention of tracing and painting the design onto paper which burned away in the kiln, leaving the design fixed under the glaze.
Decoration
Slip-coating
: Buff coloured earthenware, slip-coated, decorated with polychrome transfer pattern and glazed
Glazing
Inscription present: Large, square, one ‘M’ serving both parts and a drawing of an abbey church
Accession number: EC.7-1941
Primary reference Number: 15325
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:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (2)" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/15325 Accessed: 2024-12-22 22:08:08
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/15325
|title=Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (2)
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-22 22:08:08|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<div class="text-center">
<figure class="figure">
<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa12/EC_7_1941.jpg"
alt="Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (2)"
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (2)</figcaption>
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