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Tile with dragon design
Maker:
William De Morgan & Co.
Designer:
De Morgan, William Frend
Production:
De Morgan, William Frend
Square buff earthenware tile with a bas relief dragon design, covered with white slip, painted under-glaze in shades of green and blue, and clear glazed. The dragon is covered in green scales; it has a long, curling yellow tongue, sharp red teeth and a large, yellow and blue, beady eye. Its head is turned back, such that the design fills the square surface; the background is covered with stylised, scrolling foliage. Three sides of the tile have been smoothed, and none of the sides is glazed.
History note: Bequeathed by Guy Le Strange
Bequeathed by Guy Le Strange
Height: 15.25 cm
Height: 6 in
Width: 15.25 cm
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1933) by Le Strange, Guy
19th Century, Late#
Circa
1872
CE
-
1881
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 and Persian pottery and using them for a range of complex fantasy designs featuring ships, birds, flora and animals. The original design for this tile is held in the V&A collection (V. & A. E.613-1917, Box C.144); it has no foliage in the background and is inscribed 'Chelsea' on the back, indicating it dates from 1872-81, when De Morgan was based at Cheyne Row, Chelsea. However, it is possible the tile was made later, as most of his known relief tiles were made at Sands End, Fulham, in partnership with the architect Halsey Ricardo, from 1888-97. De Morgan made many, many designs for tiles and tile panels – some 820 are in the V&A collection.
Decoration
composed of
ceramic pigment
Front
composed of
glaze
slip
Moulding : Buff earthenware, moudled in relief, covered with white slip, and painted in shades of blue, green, and red.
Accession number: C.144-1933
Primary reference Number: 72008
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 with dragon design" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/72008 Accessed: 2024-12-27 03:50:24
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/72008
|title=Tile with dragon design
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-27 03:50:24|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/aa19/C_144_1933_282_29.jpg"
alt="Tile with dragon design"
class="img-fluid" />
<figcaption class="figure-caption text-info">Tile with dragon design</figcaption>
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