Diagonal wreath pattern tile

Details

Date: 1913
Object Type: ceramic
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C250
Designer: Jack, Margery (1894 - 1974)
Credit notes: Presented by June Randall, 2002

Margery Jack was the daugher of George Jack, Arts and Crafts architect and designer of furniture for Morris and Co., and Annie Jack, a skillled embroiderer. Margery and her twin sister Jessie were encouraged to be creative from a young age and this hand painted bowl was made when Margery was 19 years old. The floral decoration is handpainted in overglaze enamels on a white earthenware blank made by Wedgwood. Both Margery and Jessie studied at LCC Central School of Arts & Crafts where they attended the painting on china course. The course encouraged economic self-sufficency, students would purchase Wedgwood blanks from the college which they would decorate and fire in their kilns, students were then able to sell or keep the finished items.

Details

Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C217.1
Manufacturer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Michael Whiteway, 1996

Tiles and table glass were a popular and financially important aspect of Morris and Co.’s early output. Despite Morris’s belief that works of art should, as far as possible, be designed and executed by a single craftsperson, ceramics was one of the few areas in which he did not have personal artisanal expertise. Instead, he purchased blank tiles from the Netherlands. According to Jennifer Hawkins Opie: “…white, undecorated tiles ordered from Dutch manufacturers arrived at the Morris works in London ready glazed and fired. These were then decorated by the painters of stained glass already employed by Morris. Of necessity, this was done in enamel colours and this ‘on-glaze’ decoration was fired (a second firing for the tin glaze), initially alongside the enamel-decorated stained glass in the firm’s own kilns in the basement of Red Lion Square.”
This ‘Bay and Willow’ pattern is typical of Morris’s interest in natural, botanical forms. In many cases, individual tiles could be combined to create larger pictorial and decorative schemes.

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C83a
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Illustrator: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner) | Lucy
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs L Hitch, 1954

Edward Burne-Jones designed the Sleeping Beauty tile series in 1863-4 for Myles Birket Foster’s house The Hill at Witley. The decoration of the house was one of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.’s first commissions. This pair (see C83a) of rejected, misfired tiles were perhaps intended for the overmantle at The Hill, however they remained in the personal collection of Lucy Orrinsmith who decorated them. A finished complete panel of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ is in the V&A (CIRC.520-1953), it is similar to another panel of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in the William Morris Gallery’s collection (C75), also from The Hill.

The composition is similar to a later watercolour by Burne-Jones- the first painting of the very first series of the ‘Legend of the Briar Rose’ (another title for ‘Sleeping Beauty’) that he executed between 1871-73 (now in the Museo de Arte, Ponce, Puerto Rico).

Details

Date: 1862
Dimensions: 15.2 x 15.2
Object Type: ceramic
Material: earthenware tiles painted in enamels
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C83
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Illustrator: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner) | Lucy
Retailer: Morris & Co.
Credit notes: Presented by Mrs L Hitch, 1954

Details

Date: c.1863-64
Dimensions: 60.5 x 127
Object Type: ceramic
Material: tin-glazed earthenware
Technique: hand-painted
Catalogue number: C75
Designer: Burne-Jones | Edward Coley | Sir | 1833 | 1898
Maker: Orrinsmith (née Faulkner) | Lucy
Retailer: Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co.
Credit notes: WMG Purchase, 1953

This tile panel depicts the children’s fairytale ‘Beauty and the Beast’. It was originally installed above a fire place in a bedroom of the artist Myles Birket Foster, at his home The Hill, Witley, Surrey. The scroll on the surrounding Swan tiles is inscribed with a description of the story, ‘How a Prince who by enchantment was under the form of a beast became a man again by the love of a certain maiden’.

The panel was designed by Edward Burne-Jones. The bear was based on sketches specially drawn for him by Philip Webb, who probably observed the animals at Regents Park Zoological Gardens. Lucy Faulkner, the sister of Charles Faulkner, one of the partners of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. painted Burne-Jones designs by hand onto the tiles.

Burne-Jones also designed a similar panel of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ for Birket Foster’s house (now in the V&A Museum, London).

Technique: hand-painted

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