Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (1): EC.8-1941

Titles

Tile with ‘Clyde’ daisy design (1)

Maker(s)

Maker: William De Morgan & Co.
Designer: De Morgan, William Frend

Entities

• Tile

Categories

• Earthenware
• Art Pottery

Description

Square, buff, earthenware tile, covered in cream slip, decorated with transfer pattern in 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 black. The tile is thick and the earthenware coarse; the glaze is crackled; the back and sides are unglazed.

Notes

History note: Given by Mr H.C.Mossop, 1941

Legal notes

Given by H.C. Mossop

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (1941-03-26) by Mossop, H. C.

Dating

19th Century, Late
Circa 1882 CE - 1888 CE

Note

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.

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.

School or Style

Arts and Crafts (movement)