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Tile with scrolling fern design
Maker:
William De Morgan & Co.
Designer:
De Morgan, William Frend
Buff earthenware tile, the top slip-coated, painted in dark green with a scrolling fern pattern and glazed. One stem forms a slightly curving diagonal; to the left are two fronds curled up like snails, to the right is a single straight frond. Each frond carries many small leaves, which are painted without outlines, the paint thickening at the tips. One edge of the tile is chamfered, and the tile thickens towards the other side. The back and sides are not glazed. There is no mark
History note: Given by Mr H C Mossop
Given by Mr H C Mossop
Depth: 0.5 cm
Square: 7.6 cm
Square: 3 in
Method of acquisition: Given (1941-03-26) by Mossop, H. C.
19th Century, Late#
Victorian
Circa
1882
CE
-
1888
CE
This tile probably dates from around 1882-88, when De Morgan established his workshop at Merton Abbey, next door to Morris’s factory. But the design may be earlier : similar scrolling foliage is found on a ceramic jar produced by Morris in the early 1860s, which is thought to be designed by De Morgan. The tile is unusually small – De Morgan usually worked on 6x6 inch blanks (or sometimes 4-12 ins. – see Gaunt) – and the pattern appears to have been cut down from a four inch version, now in the V&A collection. However, the Fitzwilliam holds another, similarly coloured, three inch tile, which is marked ‘Merton Abbey’; possibly these were test pieces or samples. A similar four inch tile, also in green, is illustrated in a Morris & Co broadsheet offering ‘painted tiles for stoves, hearths, walls etc’; the tile price is two shillings. The design continues to appear on later tiles, often quartered with a flower, but in more stylised form. De Morgan made many, many designs for tiles and tile panels – some 820 are in the V&A collection.
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.
Decoration composed of underglaze colour ( green) clear glaze
buff-coloured Earthenware
Slip-coating : Earthenware, slip-coated, painted from a pricked design and glazed.
Accession number: EC.13-1941
Primary reference Number: 15375
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 scrolling fern design" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/15375 Accessed: 2024-11-21 15:05:20
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{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/15375
|title=Tile with scrolling fern design
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-11-21 15:05:20|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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<div class="text-center">
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<img src="https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa12/EC_13_1941.jpg"
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<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Tile with scrolling fern design</figcaption>
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