Most antique tile reaches us in pieces — a border here, a single figural block there, pried from a wall and sold on its own. It is the natural fate of a hundred-year-old surround. Which is exactly why a complete surround — all of it together, the way it left the kiln and went onto…
A rarely-seen Egyptian-revival surround by the American Encaustic Tiling Company — figures and fruit in the distinctive Egyptian idiom, a design you can go years without seeing once, let alone as a complete surround. Egyptian-revival ran through American decorative arts in waves across the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but surviving tile in this theme…
On a country path, under a soft crackled sky, a fair-haired boy in a blue jacket and brown breeches reaches toward a man in a tall hat and apron, his pie-case balanced on a folding stand. Behind them a village rolls down to a church spire and a stand of autumn trees. It is the…
Some tiles you sell. Some you keep. This apple-blossom surround from the Low Art Tile Works belongs to the second kind — a set good enough that parting with it never quite makes sense. The design Apple-blossom branches run across the surround in low relief — buds, open flowers, and leaves modeled with the ease…
People sometimes think “tiles with past lives” is just a turn of phrase. This is the set that proves it isn’t. The set A fireplace surround by the United States Encaustic Tile Company of Indianapolis — soft floral relief glazed a warm rose-terracotta, its blossoms a mix of roses, cherry, and dahlia, with a decorative…
A parlor stove, faced in the apple-blossom art tiles of the Low works, found not in a parlor but in the wilderness — abandoned, rusting, its tiles cracked by cold and time. Getting it out meant dragging it across a frozen lake in the dead of a northern winter. This is the story of that…
Three tiles, read left to right like a sentence: a hound crouched low among the reeds; a robed woman reclining on a bank, one hand fallen to the head of a dog at her side; and a tall hound standing alert against the brush. All of it modeled in deep relief and washed in a…
Four flamingos lift from a tropical waterscape — two at the center with their wings thrown wide, a third standing in elegant profile, a fourth dipping its head below the waterline. Palm fronds sweep in from the upper corners; marsh grass anchors the bottom; a driftwood branch curves along the lower left. It is a…
Some tiles were made to cover a wall. A few were made to be looked at the way a painting is looked at — framed, hung, lit, and returned to. The work that left a small factory in Chelsea, Massachusetts, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century belongs to the second kind, and more…