Turn-of-the-Century Tile Designs in Full Color

L. Francois

• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780486415253
• eBook ISBN: 9780486155807
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: History of Art

Carefully selected from a rare 1905 French tile catalog, this splendid full-color collection of tile designs features scores of eye-catching motifs. A valuable resource for today's artists and designers, this volume of authentic images can also serve as inspiration for craftspeople working in a variety of areas.
The 250 illustrations include panels and borders of all sizes, decorated with lotus blossoms, lilies-of-the-valley, irises, and other delicate florals; multicolored designs promoting meat markets, dairies, and other commercial establishments; decorative wall tiles for bathrooms; stenciled friezes with ornate floral and foliate motifs; vibrantly colored enameled squares; geometrics; and much more.
Rich in Art Nouveau flavor and elegance, these versatile copyright-free designs not only constitute an invaluable archive of usable art and design inspiration but also a magnificent browsing book for lovers of the decorative arts.

NOTE

The tiles, panels, signs and decorations reproduced in this book are taken from a trade catalog of architectural ceramics published in 1905 by Les Faïenceries de Sarreguemines, Digoin et Vitry-le-François, a company that is still in business today. These items, produced for the French construction trade, represent what looks now like an aesthetic high point for commercially produced ceramic tile. Not intended as art (though some of the panels were designed by named artists), these Art Nouveau creations—those that survive—are prized for their beauty and their charm. This charm has a large component of nostalgia, evoking as it does the Belle Époque and what we might prefer to think, if only on the basis of these stylish artifacts, was its more civilized society. Whether it was so in fact is debatable, but certainly in an age of universal linoleum-floored, recessed-fluorescent-lighted, acoustical-tile-drop-ceilinged, sheetrock-walled charmlessness, who wouldn’t prefer such merciful “amenities” (as they are called these days) as ordinary commercial spaces adorned with multicolored tile—check patterns, friezes of cats or peaches, borders of enamel daisies or lilies, images of placid-looking sheep or sinuously verdant gardens populated with birds, and perhaps an allegorical figure of Beer, or The Harvest. This decor may not have been as common as linoleum and drop ceilings are today, but neither was it exclusively to be found in the metropolitan resorts of the posh and the nouveau riche. This catalog is the proof.

Art Nouveau as a decorative style was applied to every possible medium, from architecture to silverware, most famously, perhaps, in the entrance kiosks to the Paris Métro. It flourished in the 1890s and began to wane thereafter, so the tiles in this book come from a period when the style had been popular for some time and was perhaps even a bit passé...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• NOTE
• DOVER PICTORIAL ARCHIVE SERIES