Tile with five ruby birds: EC.5-1941

Titles

Tile with five ruby birds

Maker(s)

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

Entities

• Tile

Categories

• Earthenware
• Lustreware
• Art Pottery

Description

Square buff earthenware tile, covered with white slip and decorated with ruby and pink lustre. Divided into nine squares, alternating large-beaked birds with beady eye and raised wing and box-tree sprays. The earthenware is quite coarse and the sides of the tile rough and unglazed.

Notes

History note: Given by Mr H C Mossop, 1941

Legal notes

Given by Mr H C Mossop

Acquisition and important dates

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

Dating

19th Century, Late
1888 CE - 1898 CE

Note

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 design dates from 1872-81, when De Morgan was first producing lustre-ware in Chelsea. The tile was made later, at Sands End, Fulham, when he was in partnership with the architect Halsey Ricardo. The coarse earthenware and rough sides indicate that the tile was intended for a fireplace or other architectural use. De Morgan made many, many designs for tiles and tile panels – some 820 are in the V&A collection.

School or Style

Arts and Crafts (movement)