upper edge, which hook on to the battens to which they are nailed. Broseley (Shropshire) is one of the chief places in England for the manufacture of roofing tiles of the better sort. The common kinds are made wherever good clay exists. In some places pan-tiles are still used and have a very picturesque effect; but they are liable to let in the rain, as they cannot be securely nailed or well bedded in mortar. In Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, and other counties of England, stone tiles are still employed, but are rapidly going out of use, as they require very strong roof-timbers to support them, and the great extension of railways has made the common purple slates cheap in nearly every district.
Some of the mosques and palaces of Persia are roofed with the most magnificent enamelled lustred tiles, decorated with elaborate painting, so that they shine like gold in the sun. They were specially used from the 13th to the 15th century. In style and method of manufacture the finest of them resemble the frieze shown in fig. 5.
2. Wall Tiles.—These have been partly described under Mural Decoration (vol. xvii. p. 35).[1] In most Oriental countries tiles were used in the most magnificent way through out the Middle Ages, especially in Damascus, Cairo, Moorish Spain, and in the chief towns of Persia. Fig. 4 shows a fine example from a mosque in Damascus. From the 12th to the 16th century a special kind of lustred tile was largely employed for dadoes, friezes, and other wall surfaces, being frequently made in large slabs and modelled boldly
Fig. 4.—Wall tiles from Damascus, of the 16th century.
in relief, with sentences from sacred books or the names and dates of reign ing caliphs. The whole was picked out in colour, usually dark or turquoise blue, on a ground of cream-white enamel, and in the last firing minute ornaments in copper lustre were added over the whole design, giving the utmost splendour of effect (see fig. 5). Great skill and taste are shown by the way in which the delicate painted enrich ments are made to contrast with the bold decoration in relief. These lustred tiles sometimes line the prayer-niche in houses and mosques; in such cases the slabs usually have a conventional representation of the kaaba at Mecca, with a lamp hanging in front of it and a border of sentences from the Koran.[2] The mosques of Persia are specially rich in this method of decoration, magnificent examples existing at Natenz, Seljuk, Tabriz, Ispahan, and other places.[3] In the 16th and 17th centuries tiles of a coarse kind of majolica were used for wall decoration in southern Spain; some rich examples still exist in Seville. These appear to be the work of Italian potters who had settled in Spain. The azulejos (wall tiles) in the Alhambra and other buildings in Spain are among the most beautiful productions of Hispano-Moorish art.[4] In technique they resemble majolica; but the finest kinds, dating from the 14th and 15th centuries, have designs taken from mosaic patterns, with complicated lines of geometrical interlacings.[5]
Fig. 5.—Persian lustred tiles of the 13th century, forming part of a frieze. (South. Kensington Museum.)
3. Floor Tiles.—From the 12th to the 16th century floor tiles in most northern countries of Europe were made by filling up with clay of a different colour patterns sunk in slabs of clay (see Encaustic Tiles). In Italy, during the latter part of the loth and the first half of the 16th century, majolica tiles, rich both in pattern and in colour, were used for pavements in many places. Comparatively few examples now exist; the majolica enamel was too soft to stand the wear of feet. One of the small south chapels in the church of S. Maria del Popolo in Rome has a very fine pavement of these tiles, executed, probably at Forli, about 1480 for Cardinal della Rovere (Julius II.), whose arms an oak tree are repeated frequently among the rich decorations. A still more magnificent tile floor in the uppermost of Raphael's Vatican loggie is mentioned under ROBBIA (vol. xx. p. 591). The same article (p. 589) describes the exquisite majolica tiles which Luca della Robbia made as a border for the tomb of Bishop Federight at Florence.
Fig. 6.—Majolica paving tiles from Siena, made in 1509. (South Kensington Museum.)
Fine examples of tile paving of 1487 exist in the basilica of S. Petronio at Bologna, and others of
- ↑ For the enamelled wall tiles of ancient Egypt, see Pottery, vol. xix. p. 603.
- ↑ The South Kensington Museum, London, contains many fine examples, as well as of the later sorts, like those shown in fig. 4.
- ↑ See Coste, Monuments de la Perse, Paris, 1867.
- ↑ The method of manufacture employed by Moslem races for tiles is the same as that used for their pottery; see vol. xix. p. 620, also Mural Decoration, vol. xvii. pp. 35-36.
- ↑ For the decorative use of tiles, see Julien Foy, La Ceramique des Constructions, Paris, 1883.
