The Marsden Tile Company Excellent design and execution especially in majolica and stencilled slip, fine quality in ways most other manufacturers missed, rarely is an ordinary design from Marsden to be found. Made tiles for Wedgwood, Doulton and others and sold blanks to several other companies. George Marsden was one of the greatest tile makers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is a travesty that he is barely recognised and then mostly for the wrong thing.
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Stencilled Tiles That Are Not Patent Impressed
The sage and olive clay tiles below bear Patent Impressed verso but are not, they are simply stencilled. There arises the confusion but it was just that Wedgwood only had a back die that said Patent Impressed, they didn't pay for a back plate for green clay which didn't say Patent Impressed. The same backplate was used for all green clay tiles including transfer prints. It is therefore understandable that the misconception that stencilled = Patent Impressed has arisen even though the record is contrary. An abridgement of Marsden's Patent and his letter to Wedgwood offering to sell it and decribing its uses in more detail was published back in 1892, yet the author of that book and subsequent writers have failed to understood what was written by Marsden himself prefering to repeat the misunderstandings of others. |
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Stencilled slip (barbotine stencil) tiles are often called Marsden's Patent because many by Wedgwood are found with Patent Impressed embossed verso and this has been understandably taken to describe the stencilled slip process. Marsden offered his patent to Wedgwood in 1880 and in 1881 production started with a specialist department being established the following year. This stencilled process however is not what the patent describes furthermore the slips are obviously applied rather than impressed, it would appear that the root cause of the misunderstanding is due to Wedgwood's buying in policy. A misreading of the patent not least by the author of the book in which the outline of the patent is transcribed along with a description of the process by Marsden himself has compounded the error.It is believed that Wedgwood bought most if not all of their tile blanks from subcontractors and that blanks made from green clay came from different manufacturers to those from white clay. Green clay blanks being the most often used for Patent Impressed were all embossed with that legend however Wedgwood used such green clay banks for tiles decoration by other processes, ordinary stencilled slip such as this and also transfer prints. The result being that many stencilled slip tiles which do not use the patented process are found with Patent Impressed embossed when they aren't and they shouldn't. However transfer prints were also applied to patent tiles with clay dust impressed, these appear to be rare and careful inspection is required to be sure.
Wedgwood only had a specialist tile department from 1882 - 1888, if they made tiles it would be in this period however it may be that they had one or two tile presses prior to the specialist department. Tiles made from their reintroduction to the range of wares in 1875 until 1882 would likely have been decorated by Wedgwood on bought in blanks and this is apparently confirmed by the simple application of designs for tablewares on tiles. Tiles post 1888 were likely all manufactured and decorated by subcontractors with the possible exception of tinted prints where the tinting would probably have been done in the decorating department of the pottery. The primary contractors seem to have been Marsden and Webbs of Worcester with likely Malkin, Barratt and perhaps Lea and Boulton as other suppliers. Wedgwood apparently shopped around as one would expect with such a large pottery company for whom tiles were a peripheral activity. Embossed Wedgwood tiles were pressed and likely glazed by others, Marsden for certain and likely J H Barratt and Malkin.
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