CHAPTER II
EARLY WARE
Mediæval Tiles (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries)—Slip Ware—Wrotham (Kent) (1656–1703)—Staffordshire Makers (1660–1700)—Prices of Early Ware.
As will be seen from the table at the end of the preceding chapter, the main body of English earthenware to which collectors can give their attention, belongs chiefly to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The beginnings of pottery and the first steps towards perfection in art are always interesting, but in the realm of English pottery the beginner had better push forward as the subject is a very complex one, and the general collector is perforce obliged to confine attention to the later periods.
It will therefore suffice if a hasty survey be made of the chief earthenware prior to the eighteenth century.
Mediæval Tiles.—From the thirteenth century to the dissolution of the monasteries the ecclesiastical tiles used in England were of a particularly noticeable character. The tiles vary in size, the earlier ones, as at Chertsey Abbey, were not more than three or four inches square. The earlier the tile, as a rule, the smaller is its area. The tiles were ornamented in various ways. They had incised, raised, inlaid, or painted patterns. The incised and relief tiles are the most uncommon, probably being the earlier. The designs are very numerous, and vary in character in the different abbeys at which they originated. Specimens have been found at Great Malvern, Denny Abbey in Norfolk, Castle Acre Priory, Jervaulx Abbey, Lewes Priory, St. Alban's Abbey, and at Chertsey Abbey, which latter had "one of the finest, if not the finest, inlaid tile pavement in existence" (Hobson). The Chertsey tiles are of different shapes, sometimes being round or half-circular to meet the exigencies of the design, and in general they are very quaint and original in their conception. The British Museum has some fine examples of these Chertsey tiles in composite pictures made up of many tiles.
The designs found on mediæval tiles consist of the figures of animals, mythical and heraldic, of birds, of human heads and grotesques, as well as conventional, floral, and geometric patterns. They are highly artistic and of great technical excellence.
It is generally believed that the monks made these tiles themselves in the great religious houses, and possibly some of them may have had foreign inspiration or have been made here by foreigners. But as the tiles at Malvern and at Chertsey are finer than any found on the Continent it opens up a field for conjecture. Mr. Solon says, "I have often thought that considering the French pavements of the earliest periods have mostly been found in the provinces then under English domination, it would be worth while inquiring whether the art of tile-making had not been imported from England—a point which has never yet been sifted."