A fabulous Art Nouveau tile, a slender,
elegant and inviting design in a most singular
shade of blue. A magical colour, not a cold
turquoise but having a touch of warmth - very
slightly mauvy, the glaze being very highly
translucent showing the tile's moulding off to
its best with true émaux ombrants
graduation in tone. Turquoise was a difficult
colour to produce especially in brilliant
trasnlucent glaze, most turquoises especially
those from Corn, Boote and even Mintons were
opaque.
A couple of knowledgable collectors have said
to me they have a turquoise example of this
design and question the price, well all the
other examples I have seen are an opaque
turquoise, a much easier to manufacture glaze
and considerably cheaper and a vastly inferior
viewing experience.
A low relief tile, although strictly speaking
the surface of an 'émaux
ombrants' tile should be nearer flat it is
the superlative glaze on this tile that is the
equal of émaux ombrants glazes that make
the piece. The colour is extremely rare, and I
say that unashamedly because this is the only
example of it that I have seen. Not a typical
turquoise.
The design is fairly common in translcuent
greens and typical opaque turquoise and as such
it simply does not compare, they look like
different mouldings lacking the crispness and
range of hues of this. Plain tile price lists of
the time show opaque turquoise at 5/- per dozen
and this glaze at 6/- per dozen, a significant
difference for the major production cost of tile
making, especially plain tiles, was in the
biscuit not in the glazing especially the fuel
to raise the kiln to the required temperture to
fire the clay.
Well moulded in low relief and indented to
give a three dimensional effect, note how from
one side if the design to the other the shading
is graduated giving the appearance that the
light comes from the left, the petal and leaves
to the right being in shadow. This effect is not
some quirk of manufacturing or glaze pooling due
to the tile not being level in the kiln, it is a
deliberate design feature. With less translucent
glazes this subtle yet enriching effect is
minimal.
The glaze on this tile is the best from Boote
we have ever seen, up to the standard of glazes
by Sherwin & Cotton and Marsden. After
seeing this design in rather ordinary glazes
many times it was an absolute and unexpected joy
to find this wonderful example. A tile that the
image really does fail to capture the brilliance
of.
Sometimes overlooked by collectors some
single colour tiles are for sure more appealing
than multicolour tiles, this was accepted in the
middle of the Edwardian era when art nouveau
tiles were at their most popular as some single
colour tiles were more expensive than
multicolour tiles even from the same
manufacturer. The advent of more powerful
presses and highly translucent glazes enabled an
unsurpassed quality of detail and range of tones
in single colour tiles perhaps best expounded by
George Cartlidge's 'émaux
ombrants' tiles. Without the constraints of
the risk of colours bleeding some monochrome
tile colours are unique and rarely if ever found
on multicolour tiles but this was offset by the
need for excellence in manufacture, both
pressing and glazing had to be of the highest
quality and the tile had to be perfectly level
in the glost kiln to achieve optimum
results.
Verso near perfectly clean embossed
England.